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  • Week 7 Sociolinguistics

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    Monika Ložnjak Fabjanović
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    Sociolinguistics studies language in social contexts. It focuses on speech communities, which are groups that share a language or language variety as well as rules for appropriate language use. Speech varieties are influenced by factors like socioeconomic status, gender, ethnicity, age, and occupation. The standard variety has economic and political prestige and is more fixed, while sociolects are associated with social status. Regional dialects are defined geographically and can create dialect continua or boundaries between areas. Functional varieties include slang, jargon, and argot which are used informally or within certain fields.

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    Sociolinguistics studies language in social contexts. It focuses on speech communities, which are groups that share a language or language variety as well as rules for appropriate language use. Speech varieties are influenced by factors like socioeconomic status, gender, ethnicity, age, and occupation. The standard variety has economic and political prestige and is more fixed, while sociolects are associated with social status. Regional dialects are defined geographically and can create dialect continua or boundaries between areas. Functional varieties include slang, jargon, and argot which are used informally or within certain fields.

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    52 views1 page

    Week 7 Sociolinguistics

    Uploaded by

    Monika Ložnjak Fabjanović
    Sociolinguistics studies language in social contexts. It focuses on speech communities, which are groups that share a language or language variety as well as rules for appropriate language use. Speech varieties are influenced by factors like socioeconomic status, gender, ethnicity, age, and occupation. The standard variety has economic and political prestige and is more fixed, while sociolects are associated with social status. Regional dialects are defined geographically and can create dialect continua or boundaries between areas. Functional varieties include slang, jargon, and argot which are used informally or within certain fields.

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    Introduction to Linguistics for Students of English SOCIOLINGUISTICS - SOCIOLINGUISTICS is a subdiscipline of linguistics that studies the social aspect of language,

    i.e. language in social contexts. - SPEECH COMMUNITY is the focus of all sociolinguistic investigation (e.g. town, village, club or nation, group of nations) its members share a particular language or a variety of a language as well as the norms (rules) for the appropriateness of their language in social context - SPEECH VARIETY is the language used by any group of speakers (Fig. 1):
    Standard language (superposed variety) Socio-economic status Gender Ethnic group Age Occupation Others

    Speech varieties

    Sociolects (social s.v.)

    Regional speech varieties (regional dialects) Casual Formal Technical Simplified Others

    Registers (functional s.v.) Fig.1 Speech varieties

    - THE STANDARD is the superposed variety chosen by the government, communication media, educational system because of the economic and political prestige of its speakers; it is more fixed (allowing less variation in pronunciation, spelling and grammar) and more resistant to change - Sociolects are associated with the socio-economic status of their speakers (overt vs. covert prestige) arranged along the vertical dimension, e.g.: use of vernacular/slang, taboo/swear words, vebal hedges (perhaps, maybe), politeness formulas, gender exclusive differentiation: distinct grammatical markers (Biloxi: 'carry it!' M to M kikank, M/W to W kitk, W to M kitat), distinct lexical items: e.g. Japanese: (w) taberu (m) kuu = 'eat' - Regional dialects- arranged along a horizontal dimension geographical distribution of speakers maps with ISOGLOSSES- lines representing clear boundaries betweeen speakers of different dialects- the opposite: a dialect continuum, when there is no sharp distinction, but dialects merge gradually - Dialect vs. ACCENT difference in pronunciation (as opposed to the difference in vocabulary and grammar found in different dialects) - Functional speech varieties or REGISTERS: SLANG is informal or non-standard variety of the language (adolescents) maintenance of a group identity JARGON is vocabulary peculiar to some field; occupational or sociolect (e.g. hackers: c.f. hardware/software/freeware/shareware/postcardware/crippleware/guiltware; Internet: netiquette/client) ARGOT is an obscure or secret language( e.g. Cockney rhyming slang: bees and honey, bird lime)

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