INSTRUCTOR: LE NGUYEN NHU ANH

AIM OF THE COURSE

• familiarize students with issues
concerning language and society.
• how various sociolinguistic factors
impact upon multicultural societies
LEARNING OUTCOMES
• relate sociolinguistic theories to
constructions of social reality;
• examine sociolinguistic topics of
personal or professional interest; and
• discuss the complexities and ambiguities
surrounding language analysis and
language in society
MATERIALS AND
LEARNING PLATFORMS
An introduction to
Sociolinguistics
By Janet Holmes
 MATERIALS AND
LEARNING PLATFORMS
• Official Class time: Tuesday
• 7.00 AM - 9.40 AM
• 2.20 PM – 5.00 PM
• Announcements: delivered via the
course’s Facebook Group at:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/hcmue.socio.f2019

HCMUE - Sociolinguistics (Fall 2019)

ASSESSMENTS
• Midterm Assessments: (30%)
Multiple-Choice Test: 50 items, 60 minutes,
contents covering units 1-4
• End-of-term Assessments: (60%)
Multiple-Choice Test: 50 items, 60 minutes,
contents covering units 5-8
 SOCIO SYLLABUS
1. What do sociolinguists study? (pp 1-16)
2. Language choice in multilingual communities (pp 19-52)
3. Language maintenance and shift (pp 53-75)
4. Linguistic varieties and multilingual nations (pp 76-99)
5. National languages and language planning (pp 100-128)
6. Style, context and register (pp 239-273)
7. Speech functions, politeness and cross-cultural
communication (pp 274-301)
8. Sex, politeness and stereotypes (pp 301-332)
LESSON 1
WHAT DO
SOCIOLINGUISTISTS
STUDY?
What is a sociolinguist?
Sociolinguists study the relationship between
language and society.
=> explain why we speak differently in different
social contexts,
=> identify the social functions of language and the
ways it is used to convey social meaning.
=> reveal the way language works + the social
relationships in a community + the way people
convey and construct aspects of their social
identity.
The way people talk is influenced by the social context
in which they are talking.
It matters who can hear us and where we are talking,
as well as how we are feeling.
=> The same message may be expressed very
differently to different people. We use different styles
in different social contexts.
Sociolinguistics is concerned with the relationship
between language and the context in which it is used.
Language serves a range of functions:
• to ask for and give people information
• to express indignation and annoyance,
as well as admiration and respect.
One utterance will simultaneously convey
both information and express feelings.
Exercise 1
(a) Identify the words in examples 1 and 2
which suggest that Ray’s relationship
with his mother is a friendly one
compared to his relationship with the
principal.
What does this suggest about the social
significance of choice of words?
Exercise 1
(b) Ray greeted the principal with the
words Good afternoon, sir.
How do or did you greet your school
principal?
Would you use the same words to your
father or mother?
Would you use the same greeting to your
best friend? Why (not)?
ANSWER (a)
Ray greets his mother with the friendly form hi,
compared to the more distant and formal good
afternoon used to the school principal.
He uses mum, an address form which indicates
that he gets on well with her. Note that he uses
the respectful address form sir to the principal.
Finally he refers to his teacher as that bastard
and uses a nickname Sootbucket for him  an
indication that he is treating his mother as an
intimate. This contrasts with the way he refers to
the teacher when talking to the principal, Mr
Sutton.
ANSWER (b)
Often nicknames or endearments are used
between people who know each other well
(e.g. mornin’ sweetheart, hello love, hi Jono).

When speaking to superiors, it is common to

use a title plus last name (eg. Miss Firth, Mr
Halliday, Dr Lee) or to avoid names and use
only a formal greeting, such as good
morning.
We also indicate aspects of our social
identity through the way we talk.
•who we are,
•where we come from,
•what kind of social experiences we have
had.
 Why do we say the same
thing in different ways?
Example 3
Every afternoon my friend packs her bag and leaves her Cardiff office in
southern Wales about 5 o’clock. As she leaves, her business partner
says goodbye Margret, (she replies goodbye Mike), her secretary says
see you tomorrow (she replies bye Jill) and the caretaker says bye Mrs.
Walker (to which she responds goodbye Andy). As she arrives home
she is greeted by Hi mum from her daughter, Jenny, hello dear, have a
good day? from her mother and simply you’re late again from her
husband. Later in the evening the president of the local flower club
calls to ask if she would like to join the club. Good evening, is that Mrs.
Billington? She asks. No, it’s Margret Walker. But my husbands’ name is
David Billington, Margret answers. What can I do for you? Finally a
friend calls Hello Meg, sut wyt ti ?
Why do we say the same
thing in different ways?
The choice of one linguistic form rather
than another is a useful clue to
nonlinguistic information.
=> provide social information.
 What are the different ways
we say things?

pronunciation
Grammar and vocabulary
(a) uses a passive grammatical structure
should be deposited, for example 
which avoids any mention of the people
involved.
(b) uses an imperative verb form, put, a
possessive pronoun, your, and an
address form, Jilly  much more direct
and it specifies whose rubbish is the focus
of the directive.
Vocabulary choices: Tender vs give, state
vs tell, destination vs where you’re going,
exact vs right. Use of please in (c).
Syntax: Both sentences use imperative
structures, but the more formal verbs in
(c) help avoid the use of the personal
pronouns me and you which occur in (d).
The determiner is omitted before exact
fare and destination  increases the
impersonality of the expression.
Example 6
In northern Norway, there is a village, Hemnesberget, which has become famous
among sociolinguists because the language used by the villagers was described in
great detail by two sociolinguists, Blom and Gumperz, in the late 1960s. Blom and
Gumperz reported that the Hemnesberget villagers knew and used two distinct
kinds of Norwegian: firstly, the local dialect, Ranamål ( Rana is the district, mål is
the Norwegian word for ‘language’), and secondly, the standard dialect or standard
Norwegian, Bokmål (literally ‘book-language’). Bokmål was used by the teachers in
school, it was the language of the textbooks and, after a little exposure, it was the
kind of Norwegian that the pupils used to discuss school topics in school too.
Bokmål was used in church services and sermons. It was used when people went
into the local government offices to transact official business. It was used on radio
and television. And it was used to strangers and visitors from outside
Hemnesberget. So what did that leave for Ranamål?
Ranamål was the kind of Norwegian that people used to speak to their family,
friends and neighbours most of the time. As the local dialect, it signalled
membership in the local speech community. People used Ranamål to each other at
breakfast, to local shopkeepers when buying their newspapers and vegetables, to
the mechanic in the local garage, and to the local people they met in the street. A
local person who used Bokmål to buy petrol would be regarded as ‘stuck up’ or
‘putting on airs’.
dialects
Example 7
In a mountain village, Sauris, in north-east Italy, a sociolinguist,
Denison, reported in 1971 that the adults were all trilingual. Before
1866, the village had been part of the Austrian empire, and its
villagers all spoke German. In the late 1960s, they still used a
German dialect in the home, and to neighbours and fellow
villagers. They also used the regional language Friulian with
people from the surrounding area outside the village, and the
young men, in particular, tended to use it to each other in the pub.
These men had gone to secondary school together in Ampezzo, a
nearby town, and Friulian had become for them a language of
friendship and solidarity. Italian was the language people used to
talk to those from beyond the region, and for reading and
writing. Because their village was now part of Italy, Italian was the
language of the church and the school.
languages
What are the different ways
we say things?
Linguistic variation involves
• Pronunciation
• Vocabulary
• Grammar
• Styles of a language
• Dialects
• Languages
=> variety/code: any set of linguistic forms which patterns
according to social factors.
A variety is a set of linguistic forms used under specific social
circumstances.
What are the different ways
we say things?
In every community there is a range of
varieties from which people select
according to the context in which they are
communicating. In monolingual
communities these take the form of
different styles and dialects.
=> linguistic/verbal repertoires
Social factors, dimensions
and explanations
Social factors
1. The participants:
(a) who is speaking and
(b) who are they speaking to ?
2. The setting or social context of the
interaction: where are they speaking?
3. The topic: what is being talked about?
4. The function : why are they speaking?
Social factors, dimensions
and explanations
Social dimensions
1. A social distance scale concerned with
participant relationships
2. A status scale concerned with participant
relationships
3. A formality scale relating to the setting or
type of interaction
4. Two functional scales relating to the
purposes or topic of interaction.
The solidarity–social distance scale

Intimate Distant
High solidarity Low solidarity
The status scale

Superior High status

Subordinate Low Status

The formality scale

Formal High formality

Informal Low formality

The referential and affective function scale
Referential
High Low
information information
content content
Affective
High Low
affective affective
content content
Social factors, dimensions
and explanations
Looking for explanations
Sociolinguists aim to describe sociolinguistic
variation and explain why it happens.
1. identify clearly the linguistic variation involved
2. identify clearly the different social or non-
linguistic factors which lead speakers to use one
form rather than another
3. look for patterns which will help to formulate an
explanation of why people use one set of forms in
some contexts, but different forms in others.
THAT’S ALL!
At home, please do exercises 1 to 6 for
your own sake.