An Introduction To

Sociolinguistics
INTRODUCTION:

4. Sociolinguistics and
1. Our Knowledge of The Sociology of
Language Language

5. Some Basic
2. Variation Methodological Concerns

3. The Scientific 6. Sociolinguistics and

Investigation of Language Related Disciplines
 Introduction: What is Sociolinguistics?

Sociolinguistics = Socio- + linguistics

Socio- = society
linguistics = formal, systematic study of various aspects
of language
• Simple definition:
Sociolinguistics is the study of the relationship
between language and society; it focuses on
how language is used by the individual
speaker and groups of speakers in its social context.

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 Sociolinguistics
(formal definition)

“A term used to describe all areas of the study of the

relationship between language and society.
Sociolinguistic research is thus work which is intended to
achieve a better understanding of the nature of human
language by studying language in its social context and/or
to achieve a better understanding of the nature of the
relationship and interaction between language and
society.

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Some Generalizations about Sociolinguistics

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 Our Knowledge Of Language
When two or more people communicate with each
other in speech, the system of communication that
they employ is called a code. It is also called a language.

Two speakers who are bilingual, that is, who have

access to two codes, and who for one reason or
another shift back and forth between the two
languages as they converse, either by code-switching or
code-mixing, are actually using a third code,
one which draws on those two languages.
The system (or the grammar, to use a well-known
technical term) is something that each speaker
‘knows,’ but two very important questions for
linguists are just what that knowledge is
knowledge of and how it may be best
characterized.

The knowledge that speakers have of the

language or languages they speak is knowledge of
something quite abstract.
• It is a knowledge of rules and principles
and of the ways of saying and doing
things with sounds, words, and
sentences, rather than just knowledge of
specific sounds, words, and sentences.
• It is knowing what is in the language
and what is not.
• This knowledge explains how it is we can understand
sentences we have not heard before and reject others
as being ungrammatical, in the sense of not being
possible in the language. Communication among
people who speak the same language is possible
because they share such knowledge, although how it
is shared – or even how it is acquired – is not well
understood. Certainly, psychological and social
factors are important, and genetic ones too. Language
is a communal possession, although admittedly an
abstract one. Individuals have access to it and
constantly show that they do so by using it properly.
• Confronted with the task of trying to describe the grammar of a
language like English, many linguists follow the approach
which is associated with Chomsky. In order to make meaningful
discoveries about language, linguists must try to distinguish
between what is important and what is unimportant about
language and linguistic behavior.
• Chomsky has also distinguished between what he has
called competence and performance.
He claims that it is the linguist’s task to
characterize what speakers know about
their language, i.e., their competence, not what they do with
their language, i.e., their performance.
• However, the knowledge we will seek to explain
involves more than knowledge of the grammar of
the language for it will become apparent that
speakers know, or are in agreement about, more
than that. Moreover, in their performance they
behave systematically: their actions are not
random; there is order. Knowing a language also
means knowing how to use that language since
speakers know not only how to form sentences but
also how to use them appropriately. There is
therefore another kind of competence, sometimes
called communicative competence.
 VARIATION
• Language we use in everyday living is
remarkably varied. Some investigators
believe that this variety throws up serious
obstacles to all attempts to demonstrate
that each language is truly a homogeneous
entity, and that it is possible to write a
complete grammar for a language which
makes use of categorical rules, i.e., rules
which specify exactly what is – and
therefore what is not – possible in the
language.
Looking closely at any language, we will
discover that there is considerable internal
variation and that speakers make constant
use of the many different possibilities
offered to them. No one speaks the same
way all the time and people constantly
exploit the nuances of the languages they
speak for a wide variety of purposes.
The consequence is a kind of paradox: while
many linguists would like to view any language
as a homogeneous entity and each speaker of
that language as controlling only a single style,
so that they can make the strongest possible
theoretical generalizations, in actual fact that
language will exhibit considerable internal
variation, and single-style speakers will not be
found (or, if found, will appear to be quite
‘abnormal’ in that respect, if in no other!).
• there is considerable variation in the speech of any
one individual, but there are also definite bounds to
that variation: You cannot pronounce words any way
you please, inflect or not inflect words such as nouns
and verbs arbitrarily, or make drastic alterations in
word order in sentences as the mood suits you. If
you do any or all of these things, the results will be
unacceptable, even gibberish. Individuals know the
various limits (or norms), and that knowledge is both
very precise and at the same time almost entirely
unconscious.
• Why does speaker X
behave this way but
speaker Y behave that
way? To answer that
question we must look at
such issues as identity,
group membership,
power, and socialization.
• Each of us has an identity (or, perhaps more
accurately, a set of identities). That identity
has been constructed from interaction with
others and it is the sense of self each of us
has achieved, the result of our socialization,
i.e., our experiences with the outside world
as we have dealt with that world in all its
complexity.
• Consequently, any of many factors
might have affected it: race, ethnicity,
gender, religion, occupation, physical
location, social class, kinship, leisure
activities, etc. Identity is very important:
individual identity and group identity.
• Finally, in all the above we must recognize
that ‘power’ plays a significant role in
everything that happens. Some forces in
society are stronger than others and produce
real effects, among them linguistic effects
that have consequences for the lives we live.
The Scientific Investigation of Language

Gumperz (1971, p. 223) has observed that

sociolinguistics is an attempt to find
correlations between social structure and
linguistic structure and to observe any
changes that occur. Social structure itself
may be measured by reference to such
factors as social class and educational
background.
Sociolinguistics and the Sociology of Language
• sociolinguistics is concerned with investigating
the relationships between language and society
with the goal being a better understanding of the
structure of language and of how languages
function in communication; the equivalent goal
in the sociology of language is trying to discover
how social structure can be better understood
through the study of language, e.g., how certain
linguistic features serve to characterize particular
social arrangements.
Hudson (1996, p. 4) has described
the difference as follows:
sociolinguistics is ‘the study of
language in relation to society,’
whereas the sociology of language
is ‘the study of society in relation
to language.’
Some Basic Methodological Concerns

Sociolinguistics should encompass everything

from considering ‘who speaks (or writes) what
language (or what language variety) to whom
and when and to what end’ (Fishman, 1972b, p.
46), that is, the social distribution of linguistic
items, to considering how a particular linguistic
variable (see above) might relate to the
formulation of a specific grammatical rule in a
particular language or dialect, and even to the
processes through which languages change.
• Whatever sociolinguistics is, it must be
oriented toward both data and theory: that
is, any conclusions we come to must be
solidly based on evidence.
• Those who seek to investigate the possible
relationships between language and society
must have a twofold concern: they must ask
good questions, and they must find the right
kinds of data that bear on those questions.
We will discover how wide the variety of
questions and data in sociolinguistics has
been:
•correlational studies, which attempt to relate
two or more variables (e.g., certain linguistic
usages to social-class differences);
•implicational studies, which suggest that if X,
then Y (e.g., if someone says tess for tests,
does he or she also say bes’ for best?);
• microlinguistic studies, which typically focus on very
specific linguistic items or individual differences and uses
and seek possibly wide-ranging linguistic and/or social
implications (e.g., the distribution of singing and singin’);
• macrolinguistic studies, which examine large amounts of
language data to draw broad conclusions about group
relationships (e.g., choices made in language planning –
see chapter 15);
• and still other studies, which try to arrive at
generalizations about certain universal characteristics of
human communication, e.g., studies of conversational
structure.
• As part of an attempt to work out a set of
principles, or axioms, which sociolinguistic
investigations should follow, Bell (1976, pp. 187–
91), drawing extensively on the work of Labov,
has suggested eight as worthy of consideration:
• 1. The cumulative principle. The more that we
know about language, the more we can find out
about it, and we should not be surprised if our
search for new knowledge takes us into new
areas of study and into areas in which scholars
from other disciplines are already working.
• 2. The uniformation principle. The linguistic
processes which we observe to be taking place
around us are the same as those which have
operated in the past, so that there can be no
clean break between synchronic (i.e., descriptive
and contemporary) matters and diachronic (i.e.,
historical) ones.
• 3. The principle of convergence. The value of new
data for confirming or interpreting old findings is
directly proportional to the differences in the
ways in which the new data are gathered.
• 4. The principle of subordinate shift. When speakers of
a non-standard (or subordinate) variety of language,
e.g., a dialect, are asked direct questions about that
variety, their responses will shift in an irregular way
toward or away from the standard (or superordinate)
variety, e.g., the standard language, so enabling
investigators to collect valuable evidence concerning
such matters as varieties, norms, and change.
• 5. The principle of style-shifting. There are no ‘single-
style’ speakers of a language, because each individual
controls and uses a variety of linguistic styles and no
one speaks in exactly the same way in all
circumstances.
• 6. The principle of attention. ‘Styles’ of speech
can be ordered along a single dimension
measured by the amount of attention speakers
are giving to their speech, so that the more
‘aware’ they are of what they are saying, the
more ‘formal’ the style will be.
• 7. The vernacular principle. The style which is
most regular in its structure and in its relation to
the history of the language is the vernacular, that
relaxed, spoken style in which the least conscious
attention is being paid to speech.
• 8. The principle of formality. Any
systematic observation of speech
defines a context in which some
conscious attention will be paid to
that speech, so that it will be
difficult, without great ingenuity, to
observe the genuine ‘vernacular.’
• The last principle accounts for what Labov has called
the ‘observer’s paradox.’ He points out (1972b, pp.
209–10) that the aim of linguistic research is to find
out how people talk when they are not being
systematically observed, but the data are available
only through systematic observation. Somehow
speakers must have their attention diverted away
from the fact that they are being observed so that the
vernacular can emerge. This can happen when
speakers become emotional.
 Sociolinguistics and Related Disciplines
• Sociolinguistics brings together linguists and
sociologists to investigate matters of joint
concern but they are not the only researchers
involved in studies of language in society.
Scholars from a variety of other disciplines
have an interest too, e.g., anthropologists,
psychologists, educators, and planners.
• Anthropologists have done work which we
can describe as sociolinguistic in nature, for
example in the exploration of kinship
systems.
• Psychologists particularly concerned with
the possible effects of linguistic structure on
social and psychological behavior.

• Many educators too must make decisions

about matters involving language, such as
the teaching of standard languages and the
skills of literacy.
• Language planners obviously need a
considerable amount of linguistic
knowledge in making sound decisions
about, for example, which language or
language variety to encourage in certain
circumstances, or in any attempts to
standardize a particular language or
variety, or to change existing relationships
between languages or varieties.
• There are many
interconnections between
sociolinguistics and other
disciplines and also between
concerns which are
sometimes labeled
theoretical and others which
are said to be practical.
Your Assignment
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