Sociolinguistics is the study of language in relation to society. Much of the interest in sociolinguistic investigation has come from people (such as educationalists) who have a practical concern for language, rather than a desire simply to understand better how this small area of the universe works.
Sociolinguistics and linguistics
Many sociolinguists would also call themselves linguists, as well as a large number whose background is sociology, anthropology or social psychology. Linguistics differs from sociolinguistics in taking account only of the structure of language, to the exclusion of the social contexts in which it is learned and used. The task of linguistics is to work out the rules of language X’, after which sociolinguists may enter the scene and study any points at which these rules make contact with society such as where alternative ways of expressing the same thing are chosen by different social groups. This view of the Structural School of linguistics has dominated twentieth-century linguistics, including transformational-generative linguistics (the variety developed since 1957 by Noam Chomsky).
A Real Exotic World
The best example of the strong relationship between language and society is the north-west Amazon society described by A. P. Sorensen (1971) and J. Jackson (1974). The area consists of a Brazilian half and a Colombian half, in which a language called Tukano can be relied on as a LINGUA FRANCA (i.e. a trade language widely spoken as a non-native language). Most of the people are indigenous Indians, divided into over twenty tribes, which are in turn grouped into five ‘phratries’ (groups of related tribes). In this societyeach tribe speaks a different language, the five phratries are exogamous, the main linguistic consequence: a man’s wife must speak a different language from him, and marriage is patrilocal ( Hudson, 1996).
The sociolinguistic development of the child
Though each speaker develops a unique experience of language, some generalisations are made especially with regard to the basic stages that individuals are believed to go through while developing their language. This generalisation stems from the idea that the child follows a pattern of different phases; first with parents and caregivers, then peers and finally with adults. The sociolinguistic evidence for these distinctions is summarised in Chambers (1995).
The first phase is babyhood in which the models are parents and other carers, who use ‘baby-talk’. Then, the child goes through the childhood phase in which the models are other children of the same age or somewhat older, and if these children speak differently from the parents the children’s model generally is the one which is adopted, their main concern seems to be the same as the older children. That leads to what is called ‘AGE-GRADING’.
After the phase of childhood, individuals go through the phase of adolescence. The models at this phase are other adolescents. This is the stage at which children prepare to be the next generation of adults. Unlike children, adolescents aim to be different from all previous adolescents, which gives rise to the constantly changing picture of teenage slang. Finally, adulthood occurs in which the models are other adults, with current adolescents as a potential source of inspiration.
Language Varieties
Another important topic in sociolinguistics concerns the different varieties of language. If one thinks of ‘language’ as a phenomenon including all the languages in the world, the term variety of language can be used to refer to different manifestations of it.
Hudson (1996, P.22) defines a variety of language as ‘a set of linguistic items with similar distribution’. Therefore, all the following are varieties: Canadian English, London English, the English of football commentaries, and so on.
Both Hudson and Ferguson agree in defining variety in terms of a specific set of ‘linguistic items’ or ‘human speech patterns’ (presumably, sounds, words, grammatical features, etc.) which we can uniquely associate with some external factor (presumably, a geographical area or a social group). Therefore, the very general notion of variety includes languages, dialects, and registers (or style).
In sociolinguistics, language variety is a general term for any distinctive form of a language including dialect, register, jargon, and idiolect. To understand the meaning of language varieties, it is important to consider how dialects differ from standard English. For some linguists, standard English is a synonym for good or correct English usage. Others use the term to refer to a specific geographical dialect of English or a dialect favored by the most powerful and prestigious social group. A dialect is a regional or social variety of a language distinguished by pronunciation, grammar, and/or vocabulary. The term dialect is often used to characterize a way of speaking that differs from the standard variety of the language.
In addition to the above topics, sociolinguistics delves into many other areas of interest that bring language and society together. Among these topics are mutual intelligibility, language and identity, language culture, and thought, language relativity and language determinacy, language and gender, language loyalty, language discrimination, and more.
