Introducing Sociolinguistics Dr. Emma Moore

Contents What is sociolinguistics? Why study sociolinguistics? What is the scope of sociolinguistics?

What is Sociolinguistics? What the academics say… “We can define sociolinguistics as the study of language in relation to society.” Hudson (1996: 1)

What is Sociolinguistics? What the academics say… Trudgill (2004: 21) “Sociolinguistics… is that part of linguistics which is concerned with language as a social and cultural phenomenon. It investigates the field of language and society and has close connections with the social sciences…”

What is Sociolinguistics? What the academics say… Holmes (1992: 16) The sociolinguist’s aim is to move towards a theory which provides a motivated account of the way language is used in a community, and of the choices people make when they use language

What is Sociolinguistics? No set definition or single approach, but a set of reoccurring themes Combining linguistic AND social theory Drawing upon our knowledge of the social world to better understand language

What is Sociolinguistics? Language Society Attitudes

What is Sociolinguistics? Politics: capitalist, communist, sexist, democratic, fascist… Language Setting: formal, casual… Power: rights, norms, judgements Attitudes: religious, gender, education… History: war, change,events

Why did sociolinguistics emerge? The legacy of formal linguistics Constructs models of the linguistic system Phonetics and phonology, syntax, semantics Interested in humans’ underlying knowledge of language structure

Isolating language structure Chomsky’s competence/performance distinction Competence = underlying knowledge of language structure Performance = language output which is affected by language-external conditions Colorless green ideas sleep furiously

Something that makes sociolinguists cross… “Linguistic theory is concerned primarily with an ideal speaker-listener, in a completely homogenous speech-community, who knows its language perfectly and is unaffected by such grammatically irrelevant conditions as memory limitations, distractions, shifts of attention and interest, and errors (random or characteristic) in applying his knowledge of the language in actual performance. This seems to me to have been the positions of the founders of modern general linguistics, and no cogent reason for modifying it has been offered” (Chomsky 1965).

Let’s think about that… Do ALL speakers share the same underlying knowledge of language? How do we know? Is language solely a cognitive process?

What do we use language to do? Communication AND achievement of social goals Language without social knowledge = “a social monster” (Hymes 1974: 75) Attitudes Stances Judgements

How do we know what to say? Not just important to know the linguistic rules, but the social rules too When is it appropriate to speak? Who is able to speak? Which speech forms are affective in getting what you want done? Our sociolinguistic knowledge is structured… Communicative competence (Hymes 1971)

Exercise You want someone to pass you a copy of the bus timetable. How would you ask: a friend? someone at the bus stop?

So, what do sociolinguists want to do? Provide “a socially realistic linguistics” To do this we must: Represent all speakers Not rely upon speaker intuition Be descriptive not prescriptive This allows us to learn more about language

Example of a socially-realistic linguistics Developing the work of dialectologists To represent all sorts of social identities, social groups and individuals Region… + social class + age + gender + social group How do linguistic features pattern according social groupings? Also known as: Variationist sociolinguistics or quantitative sociolinguistics

Anything else? Solve social problems involving language To do this, we must: Think about the role of power in language Look to language for evidence of social inequality Examine social policy with respect to language This allows us to learn more about society

Examples of policy implications… Sexism/racism in language Does our language render women invisible Dialect and education research and inequality Is it harder for nonstandard children to achieve academic success? Language policy and planning affects social policy Multilingualism; Standardisation; Education; Globalisation

The structure of language variation Variation based on social factors is not FREE VARIATION She were a good laugh Free Variation: Whether or not one form or another form is used is linguistically insignificant She was a good laugh

Sociolinguists believe in structured heterogeneity Social constraints Linguistic constraints She were a good laugh Social: Social class Linguistic: Type of pronoun?

Social constraints on language We learn to speak in different ways because of our place in society Social class Gender Ethnicity Age Region of origin Language is indexical: It reflects our social memberships It also helps to construct and define our social memberships

Are we all experts? We all have stories about our experience of language and its interaction with society Sociolinguistics: a target for disparagement? Sociolinguistics: as scientific and rigorous as any other academic field

Summing Up… Sociolinguistics is interdisciplinary It emerged from a particular stance towards formal linguistics We’ll focus on the branch of sociolinguistics that aims to provide a socially-realistic linguistics

References and Additional Reading Hudson, R.A. (1996) Sociolinguistics. Cambridge: CUP. Meyerhoff, Miriam (2006) Introducing Sociolinguistics. Edinburgh: EUP. Trudgill (2000) Sociolinguistics, Fourth edition. London: Penguin books. Holmes, Janet (1992) An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. London: Longman. Hymes, Dell (1971) On Communicative Competence. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Hymes, Dell (1974) Foundations in Sociolinguistics. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Required Reading: Meyerhoff (2006: Chapter 1)