SOCIOLINGUISTICS AND

PSYCHOLINGUISTICS
Bushra Sani
Lecture 1: Monday, 23rd February, 2015
What is language?
Language
 A means of communicating information

Only a means to convey

information?

 Significant in establishing and maintaining relationships with

other people
 Represents a man’s identity in the society i.e. his personality,
class, nature, job etc.
 Function of language
in establishing social
relationships
Aspects of language
behaviour
Role played by 1. Accent
language in conveying
2. Speech
information about the
speaker 3. Ideas/ attitudes
Sociolinguistics
 Study of language in relation to society (R.A. Hudson, 1980)
 Dell-Hymes calls it “socially constituted language”
 A blend of sociology and linguistics
 It is also referred to as sociology of language

Study of society in
relation to language
Scope and Utility of
Sociolinguistics
The relatedness between language and Society

1. While language is principally used to communicate meaning, it is also

used to establish and maintain social relationships.
2. Users of the same language in a sense all speak differently. The kind
of language each of them chooses to use is in part determined by his
social background. Language, in its turn, reveals information about its
speaker.
(about his personality, class, nature, job, position in society etc.)
3)To some extent, language, especially the structure of its lexicon,
reflects the physical environments of a society.
English, for example, has only one word for snow ( or two if we include
sleet), Eskimo has several. The reasons for this are obvious. It is
essential for Eskimos to be able to distinguish efficiently between
d i f f e r e n t t y p e s o f s n o w .
 English, of course, is quite able to make the same distinctions: fine
snow, dry snow, soft snow, and so on, but in Eskimos this sort of
distinction is lexicalized---made by means of individual words.

 (There are approx 50 Eskimo words for snow)

4. To some extent, language, especially the structure of its lexicon
reflects social environments of a society.
For example, a society's kinship system is generally reflected in its
kinship vocabulary.
Speech Communities and
Language Diversity
Speech Community
 A speech community is defined as a group of people who form
a community and share the same language or a particular
variety of language.
Characteristics of a Speech Community
a) They speak the same language or dialect.
b) The members of the group must interact linguistically with other
members of the community.
c) They may share similar attitudes toward linguistic norms.
Language variety
 Speech variety, or language variety, refers to any
distinguishable form of speech used by a speaker or a
group of speakers.
 The distinctive characteristics of a speech variety are mainly
reflected in its pronunciation, syntax and vocabulary.
 Speech variety is a neutral term, which is often used to replace
such terms as standard language, dialect, pidgin and creole.
 It can also be used to refer to regional dialects and ethnic
dialects such as Australian English and Black English as well
as the functional dialects such as legal language.
 Varieties of
Language

Standar
d Dialect Pidgins
Language Language
Register and and Gender and age
languag s Creoles
e
Determine
d by three
factors:
Regiona Sociole Ethnic field, mode
l dialect ct idiolect and tenor
Dialect of
discourse
Standard Language
 Standard language or standard variety is the variety of a
language which has the highest status in a community or nation
and which is usually based on the speech and writing of
educated native speakers of the language.
 A standard language is generally used in government
documents, in the news media and in literature, described in
dictionaries and grammars, and taught in schools.
Dialect
 A variety of a language used recognizably in a specific region
or by a specific social class is called a dialect.
 The study of dialects is called dialectology. Dialects can be
categorized into the following types:
 Dialects
Idiolect:
Idiolect is a Ethnic Dialect
personal dialect of
Regional Social an individual An ethnic
Dialect Dialect/Sociolie speaker that dialect is a
combines elements social dialect
A regional ct regarding regional,
dialect is a social, gender, and of a language
Sociolect, or
linguistic variety age variations. In spoken by a
social-class other words, an
used by people less privileged
dialect, refers to individual speaker’s
living in the regional and social population that
the linguistic
same background, his/her has experience
variety gender and age
geographical some form of
characteristic of jointly determine
region. the way he/she talks. social isolation
a particular And the language such as racial
class. he/she uses, which
bears distinctive
discrimination
features of his/her or segregation.
own, is his/her
idiolect.
Register
 Register refers to the type of language which is selected as
appropriate to the type of situation.
 Language used on different occasions differs in the degree of
formality, which is determined by the social variables.
 As languages and dialects differ from one another at every
level, so registers can differ in vocabulary, phonology, grammar
and semantics.
Register
• refers to what is happening, including what is being talked about.
Field of • “Why” and “about what”.
Discourse

• refers to the relations among the participants in a language

activity, especially the level of formality they adopt
Tenor of • who the participants in the communication groups are and
in what relationship they stand to each other. “To whom”.
Discourse

• refers to the medium of language activity which determines the

role played by the language in a situation e.g. speech vs. writing.
Mode of • refers to the means of communication. “How”
Discourse
Example
 A lecture on linguistics in a postgraduate class at NUML can be
analyzed as follows:
 Field: linguistics
 Mode: oral (academic lecturing)
 Tenor: participants (teacher-students)
Language and Gender
 The language used by men and women have some special
features of their own.
 Question:

In what ways is language used by women different from that

by men?
Language and Age
 In many communities the language used by the old
generation differs from that used by the younger
generation in certain ways.
Pidgin and Creoles
 Pidgin is a variety of a language that is not a native language of
anyone, but is learned on contact situations such as trading.
 The process by which a pidgin develops is called pidginization.
 A pidgin is usually based on one language, though it soon
takes on the substances of other languages.
 When a pidgin develops beyond its role as a trade language
and becomes the first language of a social community, it
becomes a creole.
 The process by which a pidgin becomes a creole is called
creolization.
 Once a creole is in existence, it may (i) continue almost without
change, as appears to be the case for Haitian creole; (ii)
become extinct; (iii) evolve further into a normal language; (iv)
gradually merge with its base language through decreolization,
a process by which a creole becomes more like the standard
language from which most of its vocabulary comes.
That’s all for today! See you in next
session!