Sociolinguistics Lecture 1.
Chapter 1.
An introduction to Sociolinguistics
Sociolinguistics
It has two aspects, a social and linguistic one.
Language: it’s a system of arbitrary( there’s no inherent relationship between the thing it
related to and the form) / signed symbols used for human communication.
Linguists: scienti c study of the human language. It looks at human language as a
system. It tries to understand that system.
Society: A group of interdepending individuals who develop their own internal
norms and values. ( so a group of people who have a sense that they belong to a certain
community )
Sociolinguistics ( sub eld of linguistics that examines the relationship between language and
society) both things.
- it studies how society affect language, and how language affects society.
Sociolinguists attempt to make generalizations about how people use language
in different contexts and to understand how societal norms are intertwined with
language use. The central issues are:
- How people use language to create and express identities
- How people use language to relate to one another in groups
- How people use language to resist, protects or increase various kinds of
power.
How does language vary across speakers and geographic regions?
How do social factors affect language use?
How are new languages created?
What does multilingualism entail?
How can language be used to restrict access to power and/or social
opportunities ( for instance regarding education and the legal system) ?
What is linguistic pro ling and how does it affect people?
^ important questions that we are supposed to answer in this course.
Sociolinguistics in BAIS:
• History: the historical trajectory of groups, use of language to delimit
national and ethnical groups,…
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, • Culture: belonging, diversity, postmodernist understandings of identities as
uid,…
• Politics: impact of government policies on linguistic groups, language
rights,…
• Economics: global markets for language-related goods and services, effect
of language on income and economic behavior,…
Whor an hypothesis;
It is something where language and thought are intimately related. And its
focused on how the speci c language that you speak in uences thought. And
mostly how a speci c language in uences thought.
“ To what extent is someone who has acquired German, as a rst language,
different than someone who has acquired Arabic as a rst language?”
- are there cognitive differences between people depending on the particular
rst language that they have acquired?
The Whor an hypothesis comes in a weak version and a strong version ( strong
version makes better claims dan the weak one):
Linguistic determinism ( Strong version): language determines our thought and
ability to categorize, perceive ( think).
- So if a person doesn’t have a word for a particular concept, then that concept is
dif cult or impossible for the speaker to imagine( not really a plausible view) “if it is
not in your language, you can not think it”
Linguistic relativism ( Weak version): Language in uences thought and our
ability to categorize, perceive ( think).// it has an effect, it is not binding but it
pushes us in a certain direction.
- There is quite a bit of evidence to support linguistic relativism.
- language in uences the way we think, but we can see things from different
perspectives and from new thoughts and ideas. Yes, it pushes us in a certain
way, but its possible for us to entertain different perspectives or new thoughts
and ideas.
“ Language provides you with a basic habit to engage in” ( it provides speakers
with a systematic default bias in their habitual response tendencies)
These habitual modes of thinking can be changed, but this requires effort.
A major focus of linguistics is to describe, analyze and understand the
knowledge speakers have of the language they can speak.
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,Noam Chomsky:
Competence : every speaker of a language, has this fast set of knowledge in
their mind. ( unconscious) Knowledge of grammatical rules. You don’t know why
certain structures or grammar is incorrect, you only know that it is. That is the
unconscious knowledge.
Performance: What comes out of peoples minds. Actual languages use. So the
way individuals actually use language ( physically released, can be directly
observed, measured, recorded etc.)
Sociolinguistics are concerned with real language in use ( i.e. performance) as
opposed to an idealized competence.
- Sociolinguistics focus on commonalities that bond groups of speakers together
and distinguish them from others ( dialects, sociolects, ethnolects ( see next
lecture))
- But also investigate idiolects; individuals’ distinctive way of speaking
Communicative competence: Its the ability to produce and understand
utterances which are adapted to their contexts of use: knowing how to use a
language appropriately ( which is not the same as having grammatical competence in a
language ).
Descriptive ( more a linguistic approach ): Its an approach where you focus on what
people actually do, without any preconceived notions of correctness to the task,
or favoring the language of one social group as somehow ‘better’ dan those of
others.
- a linguist is interested in what is this human capacity for language, how does it
work, what do people do and what kind of sensible analysis and explanation can
be provided for what we see.
- Linguistic grammar; linguists will write a linguist grammar, what do people do,
what do people seem too perceive as the kind of sentences that are part of the
language and what are the incorrect versions.
Prescriptive: its about that there are certain “rules” that you have to follow, so it
is a approach that is concerned with how a language “should” be spoken
( enforcing the rules of a language ) “what is the proper way of speaking that
Language”
- there is this notion that there is one “right” way of speaking a language ( there
is one correct variety of a language ) that is the one that you should learn and
enforce on others.
, - Sociolinguistics have a task to explain why and how that happens and which
language varieties are prioritized in this way. ( the understanding of this way)
Power: the ability to control the actions of self and others ( not physical force but
also the ability to prevent opposition from arising by acknowledged by others as
powerful)
“Power is not only displayed through language; it
is often achieved through language”
Linguistic resources we have access to play an importer role in how much power
we have ( if you speak English, you are able to to follow an English academic course, so there
are opportunities for you if you have certain linguistic resources)
Identity.
Power plays a role in how we choose to identify ourselves and how we form
groups with others ( what kind of groups we do and do not belong to) What
linguistic choices do you make to “choose you group”
- Identities is not a xed attribute of people, it is constructed and it emerges and
you make it emerge in the particular contexts and discourse( written or spoken
communication or debate ) that you are in. We can use that to convey the different
aspects of our identity.
- The way we use language communicates something about who we are or how
we wish to be perceived
- We draw conclusions or make assumptions about people based on the
language they use.
Language is indexical; It is indicative of {points to} one’s social class, status,
region of origin, gender, age group and so on.
- Indexicality: the association of a code or linguistic form with a particular social
meaning.
Particular aspects of languages have social meaning.
- we associate certain codes or linguistic features with particular social
meanings.
- This is something we all do, but can also be used in negative ways, such as it
forms the basis for linguistic pro ling; using accent, speech, and other auditory
cues to identify the social characteristics of an individual ( usually for the
purpose of discriminating against them).
- Linguistic pro ling and idexicality: the social meanings that are associated with
speci c language use from the basis for discrimination.
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