Sociolinguistics is the study of how language and society interact and influence each other. It examines how social factors like ethnicity, gender, class, and situation affect language use and structure. The field emerged in response to the view of language as autonomous and universal, seeking to understand linguistic variation and how social contexts impact language. Sociolinguistics studies language at both the micro level of conversations, speech acts, and discourse, as well as the macro level of dialects, bilingualism, and language policy.

1. The Concept of Sociolinguistics

2. Sociolinguistics
What is sociolinguistics?
Sociolinguistics is that part of linguistics which is concerned with language
as a social and cultural phenomenon (Peter Trudgill, 1983)
Sociolinguistics is concerned with investigating the relationship between
language and society with the goal of a better understanding of the
structure of language, and how language functions in communication
(Ronald wardaugh, 1986)
Sociolinguistics is any study of language in relation to society (Peter
Matthew, 1997)
Sociolinguistics is the field that studies the relation between language and
society, between the uses of language and the social structures in which
the users of language live (Bernald spolsky, 1998)
Sociolinguistics is the study of language in relation to social factors (Sylvia
Chalker and Edmund Weiner, 1998).

3. Problems in language related with the society?
 how is the relations of language and its
users – the societies?
 do people take the phenomenon for
granted? Why?
 if so why does it matter now?

4. Is Sociolinguistics…
• Intertwining of linguistics and social facts?
• Taking care of how social facts influence
language and how language influence social
life?
• What prove do we have?

5. The History of Sociolinguistics
• What did the earlier study focus on?
historical linguistics (August Schleicher)
Structuralism (Saussure)
Descriptivist (Franz Boas)
TG (Chomsky)

6. Historical Linguistics
How did the linguists view the language change?
Is the language based on..?
• Mechanistic physics?
– more general and more scientific?
• Natural selections?
- has definite laws
- develop
- change
- died out
- has family tree

7. Saussure
• How can Saussure come up with the idea of
language as a system?
• Why would Saussure mention of language as
social facts?
• Why had Saussure been more influence on
European linguists?

8. Descriptivism
• Descriptivism – Relativism
how is the relationship of all those beliefs?
• Descriptivist vs prescriptive

9. Chomsky…
• Universality
• Autonomous linguistics

10. So sociolinguistics:
• is out of autonomous field (historical and
descriptive)
• starts taking a look at variation in language
(deny the universalities of language)
• distinguishes from other interdisciplinary field
– psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, applied
linguistics
This leads to….

11. Subject of Inquiry
Micro Sociolinguistics: Conversation, Speech
acts, Stylistic, Code, Dialect and Discourse
Macro Sociolinguistics: Sociology of Language,
Dialectology, Bilingualism, Pidgins and Creole
And Language Planning

12. Sociolinguistics in Indonesia
What do you
find
interesting?

13. Thank You