Assumptions and Approaches of Linguistics
By Shaozhong Liu
Guangxi Normal University, China
3.3 Language and society
3.3.1 Two pioneers in sociolinguistics
William Labov (1966): The Social stratification of English in New York City.
Washington D.C.: Center for Applied Linguistics.
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evidenced class and style as 2 factors influencing the speakers’ choice of
phonological variant over another
successfully introduced class as an indispensable sociolinguistic variable (other
factors added today include: gender, ethnic identity, edu background, occupation,
religious belief)
“the quantitative paradigm, sociolinguistic proper, variationist studies, urban
dialectology and secular linguistics” (Mesthrie 1994; Bolton 1992; Milroy 1994;
Fasold 1999)
Robin Lakoff (1973): Language and Woman’s Place. Language in Society, 2:45-79.
Hypotheses:
 Women use more “fancy” color terms such as mauve and beige;
 Women use less powerful curse words;
 Women use more intensifiers such as terrible and awful;
 Women use more tag questions;
 Women use more statement questions like “Dinner will be ready at seven
o’clock?” (with a rising intonation at the end);
 Women’s linguistic behavior is more indirect and, hence, more polite than men’s.
3.3.2 Substantial evidences about the relationship between language and society
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Language as a social product and mirror of social change or advancement
Nylon, Xerox, Compact, Sony, Dell, Hewlett, Microsoft, seagull, Red Lantern, Spring
Thunder, Panda, Little Swan, internet, Daewoo, clone, weather the market, sideline sb,
a 7.1-footer, the Twin Towers, casino, a las vegas, Honda, Toyota Camry, Bonne
Ville; the Red Flag, the Red Guard, the red band, the red badge, the Red Star
Commune/Production Brigade; a village, a town, versus 村（委会、公所）, 社, 屯、
寨、乡（政府）, 老板、软着陆、下海、跳槽、炒鱿鱼、外卖、接轨、水货、大
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甩卖、大哥大、军嫂、空姨.
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Language as a social activity
The close relationship between language and society can be evidenced in that though
language is actualized through the mind and the mouth of the individual, we can see
that one not only speaks but speaks to others, to inform or to persuade them.
Two manifestations:
1) Internal authority: self-adaptation in L1 acquisition = learn to model after the
adults especially one’s parents in language behaviors such as a family or
community.
2) External authority: self-adaptation in L2 learning = learn to model after the
instructors or native speakers in language behaviors in an institutional setting such
as a formal class, or school.
3.3.3 Language in society: Patterning social language or depicting social
language in terms of social rules
 Language as varieties
----Language showing variation in space, time and social distance.
----Regional varieties or dialects of a reputed language
Geographical or regional dialect; Hans Kurath et al (1939~1943): Linguistic Atlas
of New England; “I can speak 7 Englishes!” Chinglish versus American Mandarin
or Mandarin as a foreign or second language, etc. Southern English (North
Carolinian English in Winston-Salem)
----social varieties or dialects or variants of a reputed language Social dialect / class
dialect / sociolect (sex, age, race, class, standard dialect, categorization of dialectal
varieties) (Janet Holmes, William Labov)
我 是 北 京 人 ！ London English/Oxford English/Cambridge accent/New York
English/DC English/学生语言/娘娘腔/领导者语言/农民语言/郊区语言/平话
 Language as “-lect”
----ideolect (personal language): Zhu Ziqing’s prose and language, Lin Yutang’s
language, Lao She’s language, Hemingway’s language
----standard dialect: A particular variety of language which is not associated with any
peculiar region; widely accepted and with codified grammar and sophisticated
stock of words; normally spoken by educated people and used in official
documents, news-broadcasting and taught in schools. The BBC English, General
American English, Putonghua (Mandarin) or Guo Yu, the national language.
----Temporal dialect: 上古汉语, Middle English, Medieval English, Old English,
Anglo-Saxon English, synchronic linguistics and diachronic linguistics.
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Language as types
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----analytical language, also named isolating language (A. W. Schlegel (1818:
Observations sur la langue et la literature provencales. Paris) classified languages
from morphological aspects and found that syntactic relations in the sentence word
tend to be marked externally with the help of function words such as prepositions
and auxiliary verbs. For example, Fr. La maison du pere vs. Ger. Vaters Haus vs.
Eng. Father’s house. The tendency towards analyticity is common in most modern
languages such as Chinese, Vietnamese) vs. synthetic language, also named
inflectional or agglutinating languages (a contrast type of classification by Schlegel
(1818) under morphological aspects for language that have the tendency to mark
the syntactic relations in the sentence through morphological marking at the word
stem.); natural vs. artificial languages
----possible types: learner’s language versus interlanguage in linguistic typology.
Interlanguage of English, analysis of the learner’s language in terms of errors (such
as by Pit Corder, Jack Richards, etc.), in terms of failures (Jenny Thomas)
 Language as family / group
----Indo-European (IE) languages; Sino-Tibetan languages; Slavic languages; Roman
languages; Scandinavian languages (Cf. Hadumod Bussmann (1996): Routledge
Dictionary of Language and Linguistics, pp.225-227)
 Language as function and style: Register or diatypic (类型变体) varieties (ESP)
----Field of discourse (technical, voice, tense)
----Mode of discourse (media of transmission)
----Tenor of discourse (intention, addressee, function of language)
(Cf. M.A.K. Halliday (1964): The linguistic sciences and language teaching.
London; D. Biber (1995): Dimension of register variation: A cross-linguistic
comparison. Cambridge.)
3.3.4 Social attitudes, reactions, and constraints toward the individual use of
language
1) A general account
 Status, power, role and distance
An awareness of one’s social status; speak or behave linguistically properly; leaders
with home accent, or habitual ways of speech; directness upon the part of a superior
speaker versus indirectness and polite language on the part of a subordinate speaker. /
Contribute that much to the conversation as is required (P. Grice).
 Reputation
Use the most reputable language in formal situation to accord with one’s status or
role.
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Domain = occasion or situation or setting
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Depending on where we stand or to which group we belong. We often use language
types fit for the occasion and purposes. Between colleagues, we might use more
technical language, whereas in circumstances where certain hearers are lack of
professional knowledge, we address the crowd in simpler and non-professional terms.
 Communication codes
Some codes might be more restricted or elaborate than others. Bernstein (1972, 1973)
argued that working class children often use more restricted code in their conversation.
This point of view was challenged by William Labov who refuted that children of
working class background might easily switch to more elaborated code when
necessary. / Use the code that is desirable to parties involved; apply the norm guiding
the codes chosen for the speech purpose.
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Code-mixing and Code-switching
People might switch from one code to another when needed, requested, required,
pressed, intentionally, tactfully, etc. / A code might be a word, a phrase, a sentence, or
the whole working language. / 卡通、麦当劳、芝士、克力架、可口可乐、巴士、
T字衫、英特网、IT、卡拉OK、MTVV、CD, VCD, DVD, Email, OK, Bye-bye, party,
有事请call 我，他在北大读MBA，我用Win2000, Word97, 不用WPS，你的OS需
要重新安装。
 Language planning
----A deliberate, official, collective and systematic attempt to solve the
communication problem in a multilingual society by studying the various
languages or dialects and developing a realistic policy concerning the proper
selection and appropriate use of these languages and varieties.
----The standard language by non-governmental institutions (the Florentine Academy
(1540) and the Academia Della Crusca (1582) to establish Tuscan as the standard
dialect of Italy; the French Academy in 1630; the Spanish Academy in 1713; the
Swedish Academy in 1786; the English Academy in 1712; the American Academy
in 1821)
----The national language by governmental decision (by inventing (New Norse by
synthesizing Norwegian dialects), restoring (Rumanian, Hebrew), imposing a
prestige language (Tagalog in the Philippines in 1940; Hindi in India in 1965),
preserving the former ruler’s language (French preserved in Gabon, Guinea,
Senegal, Zaire; English preserved in Ghana, Sierra Leone, Kenya, Uganda,
Mauritius, Zimbabwe, Zambia), bilingualism (Canada (English, French), Singapore
(Chinese, English, Malay, Tamil), Switzerland (German, French, Italian,
Romansch), Belgium (Flemish, French), Rwanda (Rwanda, French), Somali
(English, Italian))
----The official language: language used under formal, official situations or in mass
media; sometimes ≈ the standard language
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 Language maintenance
----Should be no prejudice against minor or less taught / used / spoken languages.
----Reappraise those languages that are soon to fall into disuse or die out.
 Regulating language use
----The role of dictionaries as a social force in regulating word uses
----Grammar books to regulate sentence structures
----Institutions and academicians to stipulate rules and principles: 纠错字、纠别字运
动；正确使用和维护祖国语言纯洁性的讨论；汉语规范字使用规则；《1997
年广东社会语用建设问题研讨会》；“鸡不可失”与正确性和策略性；帝王将相
回笼现象。
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Encouraging the learning and teaching of a foreign language
----The notion of a global village and the fact that communication is cross-cultural in
essence.
----The objective of teaching and learning a foreign language is to get / collect /secure
and to give /sell/attack/take/occupy. While interflow of ideas is the common
activity, competition is silently going; and the teaching and learning of another
language is a strategy plan for a government and a survival means for an individual
citizen especially when entering the new millennium.
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Creating neutral languages for common communication purposes
Ludoviko Lazaro Zamenhof (1987-1919) and his Esperanto language scheme and
movement
2) Socio-context and language comprehension
----Society as communication context (今天怎么样？老规矩。/ 今天领导来，统统
吃食堂。/教委狗一条/ 郊区，特长，农民)
----Social economy imposes new terms（WTO）
----Certain pragmatic constraints（味将军）
 Further readings
Bernstein, Basil. 1971. “Language and Socialization”, in Noel Morris ed. Linguistics
at Large. Paladin. 225~242.
Bernstein, Basil. 1972; 1973. Class, Codes and Control. Vol.1; Vol.2. Routledge.
Bolinger, Dwignt. 1975. “Language and the Public Interest”, in Aspects of Language.
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Fishman, Joshua A. ed. 1968. Readings in the Sociology of Language. Mouton.
Fishman, Joshua A., et al. Eds. 1968. Language Problems of Developing Countries.
Wiley.
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Hayes, Curtis W. Et al. 1977. “Implications and Applications: Social, political, and
Educational Consequences”, in ABC’s of Languages and Linguistics. 131~147.
Labov, W., et al (1968): A study of the non-standard English of Negro and Puerto
Rican speakers in New York City: final report. Cooperative Research.
Lakoff, Robin. 1976. “Language and Society”, in Wardhaugh & Brown, eds. A Survey
of Applied Linguistics. University of Michigan Press.
Lawton, D. 1968. Social Class, Language and Education. Routledge.
Lewis, M.M. 1947. Language and Society. Nelson.
Lyons, J. 1981. “Language and Society”, in Language and Linguistics. Cambridge
U.P. 266~300.
Potter, Simeon. 1960. “Language and Society”, in Language in the Modern World.
Pelican. 159~169.
Pride, J.B. 1971. The Social Meaning of Language. Oxford.
Pyles, Thomas. 1969. “Dictionaries and Usage”, in Archibald A. Hill. Ed. Linguistics
Today. Basic Books. 127~136.
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