Sociolinguistics Introduction Adapted from Todd M. Ferry class notes.

Knowing a language 1) Have you ever asked yourself what is happening when you use the language? 2) Do you know how your use of the language effects how you perceive things 3) How you think about relationships 4) How you think about yourself?

What is sociolinguistics? What is culture? What is society? What is language? What is sociolinguistics? Write your own short definition. “The study of language in relation to society” Sociolinguistics By R. A. Hudson “The study of language in relation to social factors, including differences of regional, class, and occupational dialect, gender differences, and bilingualism” Oxford Dictionary

Society “Let us say that a society is any group of people who are drawn together for a certain purpose or purposes.” Introduction to Sociolinguistics Ronald Wardhaugh Can you make this any clearer? What is your definition of society?

Another definition “the community of people living in a particular country or region and having shared customs, laws, and organization” Oxford Dictionary

Culture What is culture? How do you define it? Is it easy to define? “Culture is about shared meanings” Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. Culture, media, and identities by Stuart Hall

He goes on to explain that: “In part, we give things meaning by how we represent them-the words we use about them, the stories we tell about them, the images of them we produce, the emotions we associate with them, the ways we classify and conceptualize them, and the values we place on them”

Language What is language? Write down your own definition of language “Language is a system for communication. It is sometimes also called a “code” because it has a set of rules that both people communicating must follow and understand to communicate well.” Todd M. Ferry Lugansk National Pedagogical University

Phonology—the study of a languages and sounds. Morphology—the study of a languages forms and morphemes. For example, cats would be described as containing two morphemes. Cat, the name for a kind of animal and –s a morpheme indicating plurality. Lexicon—the study of the words of a language and their meanings. Syntax—the study of the arrangement and order of words in phrases and sentences.

Background Doctrine of Linguistic Relativity Linguistic relativity states: All known languages and dialects are effective means of communication 19 TH Century = either primitive or advanced Who do you think would constitute as primitive and who advanced?

Franz Boas He Believed that: 1.Earlier ideas on language were wrong 2.You could not rate language on a scale 3.There was no relationship between technological complexity or cultural complexity and linguistic complexity This truth is known as linguistic relativity. The parallel concept when studying other cultures is called cultural relativity. All things are equal and relative to one another.

Noam Chomsky One of the biggest influences on linguistics was a book by Noam Chomsky called “Syntactic Structure.” One of the fathers of modern linguistics Chomsky’s book advocated a new method of linguistic analysis called: TRANSFORMATATIONAL-GENERATIVE GRAMMAR

Language is more than the surface phenomena, i.e. sounds, words, and word order. Beneath the surface all languages share a limited set of organizing principles. Example: Surface layer: Sounds, word order, word function _________________________________________ Deep structure / Culture

Chomsky believes: 1.The brains contains an outline or plan for learning languages 2.When we start to learn a language we already have an outline – we do not start from stretch. This is called: UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR Specific set of grammara particular set of grammatical rules Which has all been taken from UNIVERSAL SET

Chomsky calls this level of language: Our language COMPETENCE e.g. what we know consciously or unconsciously about our language. He calls what we DO with our language: Our sounds, words, inflections, and usage, PERFORMANCE.

“Linguistic theory is concerned primarily with an ideal speaker-listener, in a completely homogenous speech-community, who knows its language perfectly…To study actual linguistic performance, we must consider the interaction of a variety of factors, of which the underlying competence of the speaker-hearer is only one.” Noam Chomsky

SAPIR_WHORF HYPOTHESIS The central idea of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is that language functions, not simply as a device for reporting experience, but also as a way of defining experience for its speakers. For example: 1.In English we use pronouns that distinguish gender: he, she, him, her, his, hers. 2.In the Paluang language of Burma, gender is not distinguished in pronouns. 3.In the romance languages nearly every word has a gender. WHAT ABOUT YOUR OWN LANGUAGE?

Example: 1.English divides time into past, present, and future. 2.Hopi, a Native American language, does not. Hopi distinguishes between events that exist or have existed. (aspectual) WHAT ABOUT IN YOUR LANGUAGE?

Another example: 1.Eskimos have several distinct types of words for snow. 2.English has one. WHAT ABOUT IN YOUR LANGUAGE? Here are some developments: Boilerplate - snow packed so densely it resembles ice. Champagne - super-light, fresh snow that makes skiers want to pop their corks. Death cookies - nasty ice chips frozen to the snow surface, often left behind grooming machines. Duff - loose, light snow, heavier than fluff but lighter than mashed potatoes. Untracked - virgin snowfall not yet attacked by powderhounds.

As Sapir himself says: Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society. It is quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to reality essentially without the use of language and that language is merely an incidental means of solving specific problems of communication or reflection. The fact of the matter is that the 'real world' is to a large extent unconsciously built upon the language habits of the group. No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached... We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation. (Sapir, 1958 [1929], p. 69)

And Whorf: We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages. The categories and types that we isolate from the world of phenomena we do not find there because they stare every observer in the face; on the contrary, the world is presented in a kaleidoscopic flux of impressions which has to be organized by our minds—and this means largely by the linguistic systems in our minds. We cut nature up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe significances as we do, largely because we are parties to an agreement to organize it in this way - an agreement that holds throughout our speech community and is codified in the patterns of our language. The agreement is, of course, an implicit and un-stated one, but its terms are absolutely obligatory; we cannot talk at all except by subscribing to the organization and classification of data which the agreement decrees. (Whorf, 1940, pp. 213–14)

So why discuss? IT IS A DEEP SUBCONCIOUS STRUCTURE. ALL LANGUAGES FOLLOW A SIMILAR SET OF RULES: THE UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR LANGUAGE IS A PART OF YOUR CULTURAL VIEW OF THE WORLD, AND AFFECTS YOUR VIEW OF THE WORLD.

In conclusion What are the possible relationships between language and society? Here is a list: There are several possible relationships. 1.First, social structure (i.e. social classes) may either influence or determine linguistic structure and or behavior. 2.Second, linguistic structure and or behavior may either influence or determine social structure. This is the view behind the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. 3.A third possible relationship is that language and society influence each other, that the relationship is what is called dialectical.

Social structure  Linguistic structure Social structure  Linguistic structure

glish/frameset

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