WHAT IS SOCIOLINGUISTICS ABOUT?

Sociolinguistics is a field of study that studies language with reference to speakers and
seeks to answer the following questions:
 
What meaning do speakers attribute to certain language features? How do people talk, when
they want to look... cool? Wise? Modern? How does their speech depend on the specific
language situation, interlocutors and the topic of the conversation? Why and how is language
changing?
 
Sociolinguistics is a field of study which deals mostly with language use, particularly spoken
language, but not the grammatical or phonetic structure of a language. Sociolinguists do not
study a language or a linguistic variety as a closed system with no reference to speaker and
social life. Sociolinguists emphasize that language use – the sociolinguistic language
system – is always variable and heterogeneous.
 
Sociolinguists do not divide languages and speakers into "good" and "bad". They follow the
so-called differentiation theory which says that all linguistic varieties (not only standard
languages, but also dialects, urban languages, youth language, language of various social
groups) are valuable. Their value depends on the social context and situation. Every
linguistic variety performs necessary functions to its speakers, but their value differs,
because their value depends on distribution of power, welfare and prestige in a certain
society during a certain historical period of time under certain social, political, cultural and
economic circumstances.
 
It is namely the social attitudes that determine which linguistic variety, language feature or
style speakers choose in a certain situation. Even though people cannot command every
possible linguistic resource, it is easier to achieve desirable aim if your linguistic repertoire is
rich and wide. Here we talk about the communicative competence: we not only convey
information, but also express our individual or group identity... and make use of it.
 

 
Object of a sociolinguistic research can be:

 language of speakers of different age, gender, social class and roles and language of
various social groups;
 conversation strategies, speakers' communicative competence;
 urban and regional varieties, relation between dialects and standard language,
multilingualism, language contacts;
 public language (TV, radio);
 language of the new media (text messages, Facebook, skype);
 language attitudes and their alternations (which language or linguistic varieties,
language features are considered to be prestigious, nice, the most suitable in different social
contexts and in different periods of time);
 language policy and standardization (which ideologies is language regulation based
on, how does language policy affect language attitudes, education policy).