SUMMARY

In example 1 we can find an explanation of who is Kalala, where he lives, and what is the
current situation in that place. The reason for this is to have an idea about why he can
communicate in a lot of dialects. First, we have that Kalala speaks an informal style of Shi
with his family and he uses it in the market-place when he deals with vendors from his own
ethnic group.
In the reading, we can find that Kalala communicates in Swahili to speak with people from a
different tribal group. He uses standard Swahili with officials in government offices when he
has to fill in a form or pay a bill.
That not all, Kalala also learned standard Swahili at school, but the local market-place
variety is a little different called Kingwana. He uses this one with younger children and to
adults that he meets in the streets, as well as to people in the market-place
Apart from all these linguistic variations, He listens to pop music in Lingala, but he doesn’t
speak/understand it.
When Kalala spends time with his friends, he uses another variety called Indoubil. This is a
variety that is used among the young people in Bukavu. Indoubil is based on Swahili.
It is really surprising how there are so many variations to be able to communicate and how
social factors influence the use of one or the other.

Let´s pass with example 2. This one starts explaining that “Anahina is a bilingual person” so I
think she can understand/communicate in more than one language. It´s pretty important to
know that when we say that a person is bilingual we mean that she not acquired one language
and then she learns another one, no, be a bilingual person is when you acquired more than
one language.
With this in mind, we will discuss the importance of social factors. First, we have that
Anahina speaks in Tongan with her family, in her house. Tongan is the language the family
uses at meal-times. But she speaks a little bit of English with her sisters. Here we realize how
important social factors are, which influence not only the vocabulary or the way we behave
but also the language in which we do it.
For example who you are talking to, the social context of the talk, the function and
the topic of the discussion, etc.

Example 3 is about a small South American country “Paraguay” Here two languages are
used, first, we have Spanish and then Guaraní. People in Paraguay are proud that they have
their own language which distinguishes them from the rest of South America. Paraguayans
who live in towns usually are monolingual in Guaraní, but Paraguayans who live in the cities
are usually bilingual and they read Spanish literature, but they gossip in both Spanish and
Guaraní. This one reminds me of little towns in German where is more common for older
people to speak Germany, but in big cities, they speak English.
In example 4 we have a girl called Maria, who has Portuguese parents but they live in
London. She uses Portuguese at home and to older people at the Portuguese Catholic church
and community center, but Maria speaks English at school.
She uses mostly English in her after-school job serving in a local café logically.
Participants, setting, and topic are basic in the domain, it is useful for capturing broad
generalizations about any speech community. This is often particularly useful for bilingual
and multilingual speech communities.
EX- Domain Variety/code
Home/family Portuguese

Work/employment English

Finally, we have example 5, in this one, the Chinese girl uses different languages to
communicate with people around her. At her home, with her mother and father, she uses
Cantonese. But when she is with her friends and in large department stores, Oi Lin Tan uses
Singapore English.
Apart from it, this girl learned to understand Hokkien, Hokkien is another Chinese language,
in the smaller shops and market-place,
At primary school, she was taught for just over half the time in Mandarin Chinese, and so she
often watches a channel of the Mandarin television station and she reads a newspaper too,
which is written in Mandarin Chinese.

Each of these examples illustrates the importance of social factors. like the participants in the
conversation or the function, and even the social distance.