1. The social study of Language
(Bea)
1.1The scope of enquiry
Sociolinguistics was born in the 1960s in the US, but was not a completely new idea.
Linguists were unhappy with the dominant linguistic trend, which was rather
descriptive and focused on the form of the language instead of the function of it. One
of the aims of the Civil Rights Movement in the US (1950s-1960s) was to integrate all
the people in the society.
After all colonies became independent the question “Which language to use?” rose.
- Sociolinguistics. studies the relation btw L and society, btw the uses of the L
and the social structures in which the users of the L live.
It ranges from the study of the wide variety of dialects across a given region down to
the analysis between the way men and women speak to one another. Sociolinguistics
often shows us the humorous realities of human speech and how a dialect of a given
language can often describe the age, sex, and social class of the speaker; it codes the
social function of a language.
- One of the principal uses of L is to communicate meaningand establish &
maintain social relationships (A talk between a mother and her son reveals there
is a social bond between them.
When you meet strangers, the way they talk informs you about their social and
geographical backgrounds, and a way you talk sends signals about what you think
of them.)
Sociolinguistics takes as its primary tasks to mapping linguistic variation on to
social conditions:
-Syncrhonic variation ( variation at a single point of time ) is a language
variation at one point in time and is usually called dialect variation.
-Diachronic variation (variation over time ) compared between two points in
time and is usually called language change. Historical linguistics (also
diachronic linguistics) is the study of language change.
( Before small children can speak clearly, they develop a distinct style of address
to be used when speaking to anyone. As they grow, they add more and more
variations to their speech and these come to be associated with recognizable
styles.) There is no single-style or single-variety speaker or community.
The existence of patterned variation in language makes it possible to identify
others and ourselves as belonging to certain groups. The social prestige associated
with these variations makes language a source of social and political power.
1.2 Complementary approaches
In study of L, sociolinguists, psycholinguists, applied linguists etc. each find a
different aspect of survey.
- Sociolinguist: looks at the complex connections btw the variations in a L and
the matching variations in a social group.
- Micro end of sociolinguistics: the sociolinguist’s goal is to show how specific
differences in pronunciation and grammar can refer to the education and social
status of the speaker.
(In New York, for instance, pronouncing the word ‘this’ or ‘bird’ marks the social
class of the speaker. And the choice of lexical items—saying ‘doctor’s surgery’
instead of ‘doctor’s office’ or ‘chemist’s’ instead of ‘pharmacy’ makes clear on
which side of the Atlantic a speaker has been living.)
- Macro -end sometimes labelled the sociology of L: the attention turns to the
whole of a L or variety (a term used to include any identifiable kind of L). L is
treated alongside other cultural phenomena (E.g.: Why did immigrants to the USA
from Northern Europe drop their home L so fast? How did Welsh survive English
occupation?)
Some scholars divide the field into two:
- Sociolinguistics: emphasizes the social influences of L;
- Sociology of L: emphasizes the role of L in society.
(Kriszti)
The methods of enquiry
What to study and how to study are closely related questions.
Noam Chomsky’s theory of language teaching played also an important role in developing of
sociolinguistics but as opposer.
Chomsky was interested in understanding the nature of linguistic knowledge-the grammar
that is developed in the mind of native speaker through exposure to language. He claimed that
human brain has an inborn ability to process language from the input it receives.
Sociolinguists ask a different question: how to account for variations that exists in every
language.
Sociolinguists believe that language use is always sensitive to the social relations among the
participants in a speech event. We speak differently to superiors, to coleagues, to friends and
to a children. Our speech patterns regularly change when another person (especially stranger)
enters the conversation.
So how can linguist who is a stranger and outside observer witness and record the vernacular
speech patterns that close friends use among themselves?
Vernacular = language which is used naturally, especially in informal situations
What are the data?
The sociolinguists are studying variations in speech,the differences in pronunciation or word
choice or grammatical choice.They take into consideration: age, gender, education,place of
birth etc.
Some of these data can be collected by observation, some by elicitation. Observation is of
course a problem, the speaker might be pretending or lying. But all these methodological
problems are inevitable in the study of a language in its social use.
The sociolinguist at work
There are many possibilities to collect natural speech samples.
To analyse variation in pronunciation sociolinguist count the frequency of occurence of a
linguistic feature under defined social conditions. For finer differences, they make precise
instrumental measurment of significant speech sounds.
To collect data, natural speech must be recorded on tape.-this produces the methodological
problem. As soon as people are recorded they try to make their speech clearer or more
standard. And this way the collected data are not natural.
Clandestine recording has been tried and largely abandoned for ethical reasons. 50 years ago
a study of spoken English could be based on secretly recorded telephone conversations
passing through a university switchboard, but now sociolinguists ask their subjects for
permission to use the tapes that they have made.Tape recorders are now in the open.
The sociolinguistic interview developed by William Labov is one of the most common
techniques for collecting samples of language. In the interview, the sociolinguist talks to the
subject trying to elicit examples of various kind of speech. The stylistic level for an interview
like this is fairly formal, but there are ways to change the level of formality (giving the person
being interviewed a list of words to read-it’s more difficult to relax the formality.another
exaple-when a mother being interviewed by a sociolinguist speaks to her child who has
suddenly come into the room.
Another circumstabce may be when the speaker is emotionally involved in an event
But interviews are expensive in time and effort.
For studying larger populations one techique is the covert (secret) collection of nonintrusive responses
Labov used this technique when he asked salespeople in 3 New York department stores a
question to which the answer was „Fourth Floor” by first answer he recorded post vocalic”r”
„th” by asking for a repetition he got a second set of data this time with added stress.
To get statistically analysable data about attitudes and behaviours common technique is the
questionnaire – a prepared list of questions to which strangers are asked to answer them.
Q. are mainly used by social psychologists who ask the people they are studying
- it can be a set of questions about themselves, their beliefs and their behaviours. By
repeating the same question in different forms the psychologist can get some idea of
the reliability of the answers and by careful wording of questions attention can be
focused on those features that are to be analysed.
- One of the difficulties with direct questionnnaires can be that they focus attention on
the issue, so people answering might tell us what they think we want to know.
- Questionnaires are fixed in advance so they might leave out questions that seem
interesting later on.
In this respect interviews are much more flexible.
Q.are useful for _gathering demographic data
- to study attitudes