Sociolinguistics

1. ASSIGNMENT # 1
SUBMITTED TO: Sir Waleed
SUBMITTED By: Huma Saleem
Ayesha Afzal
Syeda Qurat ul ann
Amna Safdar
Semester: M.A (Eng) 3rd
TOPIC: Language Variation
SUBJECT: Socio-Linguistics
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2. Sociolinguistics:
Sociolinguistics is the branch of Linguistics which deals with the study of
language used in society and in sociocultural context. In addition, it is the
study of the linguistic indicators of culture and power (Schmitt, 2011).
It describes language varieties between different ethnic, religious, status , and
gender groups; and explains how educational level, age etc., may influence the language
differences, and categorizes individuals in social or socioeconomic classes . Linguists
commonly use language variety, as a cover term for any of the overlapping
subcategories of a language, including dialect, idiolect, register, and social dialect.
Language:
It is a system of arbitrary signals:
• Voice sounds
• Gestures
• Written symbols
All these signals communicate thought or feelings. It is through the language that
we can communicate. It is a tool for uniting people or dividing people.
Language allows people to share. Language dies, changes and it is not
passive.
Language Variety:
Specific language or specific form of language used by a particular community is
called language variety. Each language exists in a number of varieties and is in one sense
the sum of those varieties. Hudson defines a variety of language as ‘a set of linguistic
items with similar distribution,’ a definition that allows us to say that all of the following
are varieties:
Canadian English, London English, the English of football commentaries, and so on.
According to Hudson, this definition also allows us to treat all the languages of some
multilingual speaker or community as a single variety, since all the linguistic items
concerned have a similar social distribution.
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3. In sociolinguistics a variety is also called a lect. It is a specific form of a language or
language cluster. This may include languages, dialects, accents, registers, styles or other
sociolinguistic variation, as well as the standard variety itself.
Language variation:
In study of language variation we’ll study the following topics:
 Standard language
 Non standard language
 Dialect
 Register
 Pidgin
 Creole
 Lingua franca
 Diglossia
 Style
We are going to encounter the following topics of our interest:
• Standard language
It refers to a mode of usage of most educated speakers of a language and
established as the prestigious form of that language. This term is also used for
that variety of a language which is considered to be the norm. To give a
language, name of a standard language, planning and policies are made by the
elite class and government officials. These plannings and policies depend upon
ideology. This process of standardization is historical and remains in progress
all the time. Standard language strictly follows the grammar and pronunciation
rules of the language concerned.
• Non Standard Language:
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4. The term nonstandard was originally used by linguists to refer to language
varieties that had previously been labeled with terms such as vulgar.
Nonstandard English differs from Standard English at the level of grammar (it
does not follow the grammar or pronunciation rules of standard language).
Language and Social Variation:
Language and society are strongly connected to each other and both of them
affect the other one equally. People living in the same region but with
different social class, education etc speak language differently. Differences in
way of speaking, implicitly or explicitly, work as indications of membership
in different social groups or speech communities. A speech community is a
group of people who share a set of norms and expectations regarding the use
of language.
Education and Occupation:
Time spent in schools and educational institutes change the way we speak.
Similarly the occupation of a person also influences his/her way of speaking.
Though we have individual differences in speech or personal dialects
(idiolects). But generally we tend to speak as our colleagues or class fellows
speak. Sometimes people tend to refine their pronunciation to pose
themselves more educated.
Dialect:
Dialect is a language variety according to its users. It involves differences in
vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation of a language.
Dialect is one of those words that almost everybody thinks they understand, but
which is in fact a bit more problematic than at first seems to be the case. A simple,
straightforward definition is that a dialect is any variety of English that is marked off
from others by distinctive linguistic features. Such a variety could be associated with a
particular place or region or, rather more surprisingly, it might also be associated with a
certain social group—male or female, young or old, and so on.
Dialect is of the following types:
 Regional dialect
 Social dialect
 Individual dialect
Regional dialect (Regiolect):
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5. A regional dialect is a distinct form of a language spoken in a particular
geographical area. Also known as a regiolect.
If the form of speech transmitted from a parent to a child is a distinct regional
dialect, that dialect is said to be the child's vernacular. Some regional dialects have been
given traditional names which mark them out as being significantly different from
standard varieties spoken in the same place. By identifying this kind of dialect we can
know that from which region someone belongs.
Social Dialects (Sociolects):
In the social study of dialect, it is social class that is mainly used to define groups of
speakers as having something in common. The two main groups are:
 Middle class:
Those who have more years of education and perform non-manual work.
 Working class:
Those who have fewer years of education and perform manual work of some
kind.
The study of social dialects focuses on towns and cities as upper class, middle
class, lower class, exists in urban areas, not in rural areas. The educational
background, occupation and living standard define social class of a person,
and every social class has a particular way of speaking (differences in
pronunciation, vocabulary…)
Individual Dialect (Idiolect) :
An idiolect is the distinctive speech of an individual--a linguistic pattern regarded as
unique among speakers of a person's language or dialect.
Although the unique circumstances of every life result in each of us having an
individual way of speaking, a personal dialect or idiolect, we generally tend to sound
like others with whom we share similar educational background and/or occupations. For
example: people who went to college speak different than those who didn’t.
Accent:
Every speaker has an accent or a way of pronunciation which is influenced by
his/her region, social class and gender. An accent may identify the locality in
which its speakers reside. (Geographical or regional accent).It can indicate
the socio-economic status of its speakers, their ethnicity or social class. For
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6. example accent of American and British speakers of English differ from
each other, so does the accent of Pakistani speakers of English.
Register:
A register is a conventional way of using language that is appropriate in a
specific context, which may be identified as situational (e.g. in church),
occupational (e.g. a lawyer’s language) or topical (talking about a specific
topic e.g. linguistics, psychology, literature). Every native speaker is normally
in command of several different language styles, called registers, which are
varied according the formality of the occasion, and the medium used (speech,
writing, or sign).
The concept of linguistic register has been described by Trudgill as follows:
“Linguistic varieties that are linked to occupations, professions or topics have been
termed registers. The register of law, for example, is different from the register of
medicine, which in turn is different from the language of engineering and so on.
Registers are usually characterized solely by vocabulary differences; either by the use of
particular words, or by the use of words in a particular sense.”
There is a specific register for describing any part of body utilized by doctors. These
types of register are certainly alien for any common person in fact fulfilling the purpose
of register. The specific register employed by doctors is as follows;
Body part Medical term
Head Cranium
Forehead Frontails
Eyeball Globe
Eye socket Orbit
Eye hole Pupil
Ears Pinna
Ear canal External meatus
Jargon:
One of the defining features of a register is the use of jargon, which is special
technical vocabulary (e.g. plaintiff, suffix) associated with a specific area of
work or interest. Jargon is a type of language that is used in a particular
context and may not be well understood outside of that area of interest. The
context is usually a particular occupation that is a certain trade, profession
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7. or academic field. Basically this is a language used by the people who work
in a particular area or who have a common interest.
The jargon helps professionals talk about their subject matter easily, and
maintain relationship with each other. Additionally it helps exclude ‘out
siders’ e.g. when doctors discuss patient’s condition in front of him without
letting him know, they use their jargon or subject specific terminology.
Slang:
A kind of language consisting of words and phrases that are regarded as very
informal are more common in speech than writings and are typically
restricted to a particular context or group of people. These are words or
expressions which are informal and not a standard language. The abuses in
any language are considered to be slang. Another way of using slang is the
use of taboo words which are socially prohibited but teens use them.
Oftenly, vernacular language is mixed with slang by some people. But slang is
totally a different phenomenon. Vernacular is basically a native language or
native dialect of a specific population (mostly Africans’ language is called
vernacular in which double negation is involved) distinguished from a
national or standard language. Slang describes the words or phrases that
are used instead of normal language among youngsters.
Speech Style and Style-shifting:
In sociolinguistics, a style is a set of linguistic variants to which specific social
meanings are attributed. The study of sociolinguistic variation examines the relation
between social identity and ways of speaking.
Along with social class, gender, age etc.., another factor which changes the way
of speaking is the formality of the situation. The way of speaking according
to the formality level of a situation is described as style or speech style. And
shifting or changing style according to formality level is called style-shifting.
Style has two kinds:
• Formal style
Formal style is when we pay more careful attention to how we are speaking. We
use formal style in official documents, books, newspapers, etc.
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8. • Informal style
Informal style is when we pay less attention. It is described as casual style. We
use it everyday in our conversation.
A change of an individual from one style to another is called style shifting. The
middle class people tend to shift their style to upper class speech to make it
more ‘formal’. So if someone is speaking ‘car’ in careful speech in New
York, s/he will try to use upper class style pronunciation i.e. /ka:r/.
Formal and informal style have other differences as well e.g. the use of
vocabulary items ‘father’ vs. ‘dad’. There are grammatical structures which
are more commonly used in formal style as compared to informal style.
Prestige:
In discussing style-shifting, we introduced the idea of a prestige form as a way of
explaining the direction in which certain individuals change their speech.
Prestige form is a kind of language which is associated with people having a
higher social status.
• ‘Overt prestige’ or ‘open prestige’ is a status that is generally recognized as
‘better’ or more positively valued in the larger community.
• Another type of prestige is ‘covert prestige’ or ‘hidden prestige’. The
members of lower class, less frequently tend to change their speech or switch
to a more ‘formal or careful’ style. The motivation behind in such cases is
covert prestige.
Speech Accommodation:
Sometimes people tend to change or modify their speech according to the
‘audience design’. Speech accommodation is defined as our ability to modify
our speech style toward or away from the perceived style of the person(s)
we’re talking to. The two key concepts of SAT are:
1. Convergence
2. Divergence
• Convergence constitutes a linguistic accommodative process in which a speaker
modifies his/her own speech to resemble more closely the addressee's
speech. We can adopt a speech style that attempts to reduce social distance and
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9. use forms that are similar to those used by the person we’ re talking to. It is used
to reduce the social difference between the speaker and the listener.
• When a speech style is used to emphasize social distance between speakers,
the process is called divergence. In this process the speaker makes his speech
more unlike than that of the listener.
In case of ‘convergence’ the speakers will tend to speak the same dialect, same
accents e.g. vocabulary items, grammatical structures and pronunciation.
But in case of ‘divergence’ the speaker(s) will tend to use different accent or
dialect to emphasize social distance and their ‘individual identity’.
References:
• An introduction to Sociolinguistics by Ronald Wardhaugh 2006
edition.
• The Study of Language by George Yule, P240-1, P254-9
• http://www.ling.ohio-state.edu/
• http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/popcult/handouts/register/regist
er.html
• http://www.doctorsecrets.com/medical-terms/medical-terms-body-
parts.html
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10. use forms that are similar to those used by the person we’ re talking to. It is used
to reduce the social difference between the speaker and the listener.
• When a speech style is used to emphasize social distance between speakers,
the process is called divergence. In this process the speaker makes his speech
more unlike than that of the listener.
In case of ‘convergence’ the speakers will tend to speak the same dialect, same
accents e.g. vocabulary items, grammatical structures and pronunciation.
But in case of ‘divergence’ the speaker(s) will tend to use different accent or
dialect to emphasize social distance and their ‘individual identity’.
References:
• An introduction to Sociolinguistics by Ronald Wardhaugh 2006
edition.
• The Study of Language by George Yule, P240-1, P254-9
• http://www.ling.ohio-state.edu/
• http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/popcult/handouts/register/regist
er.html
• http://www.doctorsecrets.com/medical-terms/medical-terms-body-
parts.html
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