This document discusses language and social context, specifically focusing on sociolinguistics. It examines how language is influenced by social factors like age, sex, class, and education. Sociolinguists study language variation and how social contexts like these can lead to differences in vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation between social groups. The document also discusses bilingualism, noting that bilingual children may have advantages in flexible thinking and transferring knowledge between languages compared to monolingual children.

1. Language and Social Context
is the study of language in its social
context and well related to historical and
comparative linguistics.
Sociolinguistics
“People learn their language for a variety
of reasons and under a variety of
conditions.”
- Terry Piper “Language and Learning”
study language in relation to social factors such as
age, sex, ethnic origin, social class, and
educational level.
– Piper (1998)
Sociolinguist
 The Sociology of Language
 Sociological Linguistics
 Anthropological Linguistics
Expressions related to Sociolinguistics:

2. Language and Social Context
Cognitive Pyschologists advocate the necessity of widening the
notion of competence to take account of at least part of what
might be called the “social context” of speech – Labov (1967)
The ability to use one’s language correctly in a variety of
socially determined situations is as much as central a part of
linguistic competence as the ability to produce grammatically
well-formed sentences.
The reflection or consultation or
alteration of interpersonal relationships
and socio-cultural values - Sapir
“Communion”
Inter-penetrates with almost all walks of
life and varieties of experience.
Language

3. Language and Social Context
A linguistic behavior that is stylistic choice within
bilingual and monolingual repertoires is usually
full of social as well as other types of meaning.
“Code switching”
 Integrative – refers to the wish to identify with the culture of the speakers of the
language being learned.
 Instrumental – refers to the valuation of relevance and significance which might be
acquired along with the language.
2 basic type of language-learning motivation – Lambert (1967)

4. A Case of Bilingualism
(of a person) speaking two languages
fluently
Bilingual
 Have more insight into the properties of
language and more flexible thinking in problem
solving, perhaps traceable to their awareness
that a concept can be expressed in more than
one way (Werner 1990).
 Knowledge acquired in one language can be
transferred easily to the other languages.
 Children who acquire a second language at an
early age have better accent in that language
than those who learn the second language
during adulthood.
Advantages of bilinguals: a. Children build a vocabulary of words from
both language which only rarely are
translation equivalents of each other.
3 STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT IN EARLY CHILDHOOD BILINGUALISM,
according to Crystal
(Piper, Language and Leaning, 1998)
b. When they begin to combine words in two-
and three-word sentences, words from both
languages are used within the same sentence
but the amount of mixing declines rapidly
c. As the vocabulary grows larger in each
language, children begin to learn translation
equivalents

5. A Case of French Acquisition
Jean-Michel at the age of three moved to Paris with his family, and was enrolled in French nursery school. English
maintained in the home, while French was spoken at school.
(Adapted, excerpted and outlined from Ruth Guy Metraux “Study of Bilingualism”, 1962)
What a child does and does not do when learning or
acquiring a language (enumerated by: Fromkin and
Rodman, An Introduction to Language, 1993):
Children do not learn a
language by storing all
the words and all the
sentences in some giant
mental dictionary. The
list of words is finite,
but no dictionary can
hold all the sentences,
which are infinite in
number.
Children learn to construct
sentences, most of which
they have never have
produced before.
Children learn to understand sentences
they have never heard before. They
cannot do so by matching the “heard
utterance” with some stored sentences.
Children must therefore
construct mentally the “rules”
that permit them to use
language creatively.
No one teaches them these
rules. Their parents are no
more aware of the
phonological, syntactic, and
semantic rules
As a conclusion, Walter Leopold states the following, in his book, Speech Development of a Bilingual Child:
The historical treatment of a child’s language is much more revealing than the recording of single
word-forms and sound-substitution, because both are not stable; they change, in some cases through many
stages.

6. Language and Sexism
On women stems from the fact that the world is partriarchal
and androcentric.
The Situation of Language Sexism
Proposed a methodology that empowered women as never
seen before.
Elizabeth Schuessler-Florenza
Is a movement based on the principle that mean and women
are created equal, that is, equal in dignity.
Feminism
Made great contributions and is instrumental in challenging
many of the ways by which Western culture has absolved the
male experience as the norm for all human experiences.
Michel Focault