Sociolinguistics
Language & Society
1. The notion of a language
Dialect = A variety of a language or a specific from of a language which differs in:
1. Pronunciation + sound system
2. Syntax
3. Vocabulary
There are four criteria used to define language.
1. Geography
2. Nationality/Ethnicity
3. Mutual intelligibility
4. Speech community
1.1 Geography = The place that the speaker lives in or mostly spends his/her life
in
 If two or more speakers live in the samegeography, they are speaking
dialects of the same language
 If two or more speakers live in different geography, they are speaking
different language
1.2 Nationality: the fact of belonging to a particular nation/race
 If two or more speaks share nationality or ethnicity, they are speaking
dialects of the same language
 If two or more speakers have different nationalities or ethnicities, they
are speaking different language
 But nationality/ethnicity has little to do with languages a person
speaks

1.3 Mutual intelligibility: ability to understand each other.
 If two or more speakers can understand each other, they are speaking
dialects of the same language
 If two of more speakers do not understand each other, they are
speaking different language
1.4 Speech Community: “any group of people who consider that They speak the
same language”
 If two or more speakers are in the same speech community, they are
speaking dialect of the same language
 If two of more speakers are from different speech communities, they
are speaking different language
2. Language Variation
There are two main types of variation:
 Variation between people
 Variation within the speech of a single person
1. Language variation between people
Types of Dialect:
1. Regional Dialect (geographical Dialect)
= a language variety of a particular geographical area
- The geographical and Cockney dialects of English
- Lancashire dialect & Standard British English
- American English & British English
2. Social Dialect
- Social class dialect
- Ethnic dialect
- Gender dialect
- Age dialect
2. Language variation within a person (stylistic Variation)
 Register/style: a stylistic variant of a language appropriate to a particular
social setting
 Varies according to
o The topic under discussion
o The formality of the occasion
o The medium used
Thus, when we communicate, we need not only knowledge of grammaticality, but also appropriateness.
1) The formality of the occasion
Formal = Are you going to take Mathematics course?
Informal = Gonna take Math?
2) The medium used
Formality-informality scale overlaps with the medium used.
Speech – less formal
Writing – more formal
 Speech contains informal features.
 Writing contains formal features.
3. Multilingual communities
3.1 Bilingual–Bilingualism
 Bilingual: -a person who has some functional ability in a second language-a
person who can use two language for communication
 Bilingualism: the state of having competence, both grammatical and
communicative, in two language
 Bilingual Community: Speech communities in which two language are used by
people in their daily life
3.2 Multilingual – Multilingualism
 Multilingual: a person who can use more than two languages for communication
 Multilingualism: the state of having complete, both grammatical and
communicative, in more than two languages
 Multilingual Community: Speech communities in which more than two
languages are used by people in their daily life
3.3 Monolingual – a person who can speak one language fluently
3.4 Code -Switching: the movement back and forth between two languages or dialects
within the same sentence or discourse. The concurrent use of more than one language,
or language variety, in conversation
3.5 Standard language
 A particular dialect of a language accepted by and serving as a model for a larger
community
 Spoken by educated people
 Most texts written in that language follow its spelling and grammar norms
3.6 Lingua Franca
 Originally means ‘French language’
 A language used for communication between people whose first languages differ
 A language common to speakers of diverse languages that can be used for
communication and commerce
3.7 Artificial Language
 A language created by a person or a group of people for a certain purpose,
usually when this purpose is hard to achieve by using a natural language
 E.g. Esperanto (the artificial language that was devised to serve as a lingua
franca for the world)
3.8 Pidgins & Creoles
Pidgin
 Arise when members of a politically or economically dominant group do
not learn the native language of the people they interact with as political or
economic subordinates
 Members of the subordinate community create a simplified variety of the
language of the dominant group as their own second language
Creole
 a language that begins as a pidgin and eventually becomes the first
language of a speech community through its begin learned by children
 a former pidgin that has acquired native speakers
Decreolization:
If a Creole language is spoken in an area where the base or the parent language is
spoken, the Creole will become decreolized as phonemes, words and grammatical
structures from the base language will replace the Creole ones. Decreolization happens
because the base language is considered more prestigious than the Creole language.
Psycholinguistics
Language and mind
1. Psycholinguistics is …
 The study of language and the mind.
 The study of the influence of psychological factors on the development,
use, interpretation of language.
 The study of psychological states and mental activity associated with the
use of language.
Psycholinguistics is not ‘psychology of communication’ – the study of human methods of
communication e.g. gesture, facial expression, etc.
Psycholinguistics studies …
- Acquire language
- Comprehend speech
- Produce speech
- Store language
2. Language acquisition is …
 The process of learning a native or a second language.
 The process by which language develops in humans.
3. Theories of language acquisition
‘The Innateness Hypothesis’
o The imitation theory
o The reinforcement theory
o The active construction of a grammar theory
3.1 The innateness hypothesis
Humans are not born talking but understand and speak language before enter
school.
‘Language ability is innate in humans.’
 Humans are genetically predisposed to learn and use language.
 Babies are born with …
1) The knowledge that languages have patterns.
2) The ability to look for those patterns.
There are …
o Some linguistic characteristics common to all language.
o Set of characteristics shared by all languages.
o All humans know without having to learn them.
Two types of behaviours
1) Innate behaviours / instinct / biologically controlled behaviours / genetically
triggered behavior
 Behaviours you develop on your own, which do not need to be taught or
learned.
 What you do naturally, with no clue of why or where you learned it.
2) Learned behaviours
 Behaviours that were observed by an individual that he/she find them to be
beneficial to him/her in some way. There’s a motivating factor behind it.
 Some type of action or reflex that you learn.
 Behaviours that you decide to learn. They are not natural behaviours, instead
they are learned by that being.
Eric Heinz Lenneberg
 Developed a set of criteria for determining whether something is a biologically
controlled behavior.
“If language acquisition has each of these characteristics, it is an innate behavior.”
1. The behavior emerges before it is necessary.
o ‘People use language to take care of other’s needs.’
o Language has encouraged the survival.
o Children begin to speak long before they can take care of themselves.
2. Its appearance is not the result of a conscious decision.
o ‘conscious decision – decide whether or not to learn golf or basketball’
o Children don’t decide to start acquiring language.
o Language just simply develops in them.
3. Its emergence is not triggered by external events.
o Not because adults suddenly decide that it’s time for ‘language school’
o Live in a world of language.
o Need no other external stimulus to begin the process of acquiring language
(the surrounding environment must be rich enough to develop adequately)
4. Direct teaching and intensive practise have relatively little effect on
development of behavior.
o Correcting children on grammar won’t make them learn language any faster.
o Coaching by adults can have an effect on children’s language skills.
5. There is a regular sequence of “milestones” as the behavior develops.
o The behaviour’s development can be correlated with age.
o Children master linguistic skills in a certain order.
6. There is likely to be a critical period for the acquisition of the behaviour’
after which it is very difficult to learn.
o A period of time in an individual’s life during which language must be acquired
o A period during which language acquisition is possible and after which
language acquisition becomes impossible.
Two critical periods
1. Birth – 2 years old
o A child needs exposure to language in order to develop the brain structures necessary for
language acquisition and acquiring native speaker competence.
o If the period is missed, the brain will never develop the same structures later.
o If the child is not exposed to language at all, the child will never be able to gain native
mastery of a language.
o Language skills could not be acquired normally if the learning began after the first period
has ended.
2. 10 – 16 years old
o During the 2nd critical period, individuals can still acquire a language, but not with native
competence.
o After puberty, it is clearly impossible to learn a second language with ‘native’ mastery.
Conclusion : Critical Periods
Humans can learn language normally only if they are exposed to a language by a certain age.
The innateness hypothesis : Conclusion
1) Children are preprogrammed to learn language.
2) The innate linguistic ability must be developed during a finite critical
period.
3.2 Theories of language acquisition
3.2.1 The imitation theory
1) Basic concept : children learn language by memorizing the words and sentences.
o Theory suggests children learn language through copying and imitation others.
2) Limitation of the imitation theory
o Children make predictable and consistent errors that are not ever heard in the
adult grammar.
The children don’t simply memorise all of the words.
The imitation theory can’t explain where the children get those errors.
o Children try to repeat adults’ utterances but they can’t do accurately.
3) Children can peoduce and understand new sentences.
 The principle of “Memorizing and imitation” : Children wouldn’t be able to
produce or understand the sentences they had never heard before
3.2.2
The Reinforcement Theory
1. Basic Concept : Children learn to speak like adults because
o They are praised, rewarded, or otherwise reinforced when they use the
right forms
2. Limitations of the Reinforcement Theory
o Parents actually don’t seem to correct children’s grammar too much.
o When adults try to correct a child’s grammar, the attempts usually fail
entirely.
3.2.3 The Active Construction of a Grammar Theory
 Basic Concept : Children “ invent” the rules of grammar themselves.
o Inventions based on the speech they hear
 Process
1)
Listen to the language around them. (Input)
2)
Analyze it to determine the patterns that exist.
3)
Hypothesize a rule to explain it
4)
Add the rule to their grammar.
5)
Use it in constructing utterances.
6)
Compare & realize that some forms don’t match the forms produced by this “rule”
7)
Modify the rule and the irregular forms to their grammar.
In conclusion, the Active Construction of a Grammar Theory can expain
1) consistent errors
2) imperfect imitation
3) ability to produce new sentences
4) where the child’s rules come from
3.1 Milestones in Motor Development
3.2 Milestones in Language Development
 A child’s first real word is uttered around one years of age.
 Before this a baby goes through several developmental stages.
 Most children will have completed the basic language acquisition process
by the age of 5
4. Language and the Brain
 Right brain:
-controls the left side of the body
-controls perception of spatial and nonverbal concepts
-creative and emotional skills
 Left brain
-controls the right side of the body
-logic, analysis, and spatial reasoning
 Aphasia
-Speech disorder
-a loss or important of the ability to produce or comprehend language, due to brain damage
-a medical condition in which a person is unable to speak or write or understand speech or
writing because of damage to the brain
 Broca’s Aphasia ( agrammatic aphasia, motor aphasia, expressive aphasia, or nonfluent
aphasia)
-Broca’s Area involves in speech production
-patient with intelligent, good language comprehension, severe deflect in speech production
-unable to create grammatically-complex sentence
-sentence construction is poor, omitting function words (mostly contain content words)
 Wernicke’s Aphasia (fluent aphasia, impressive aphasia, receptive aphasia, sensory
aphasia)
- Wernicke’s area involves in the recognition of spoken words, understanding
formulating coherent , propositional speech
- patient with fluent but meaningless speech, very poor language comprehension