Sociolinguistics

Week 1

What is sociolinguistics?

• Sociolinguistics is a branch of Linguistics that studies the relationship between language and its social function.

Sociology of Language

• This field studies a specific social problem related to a specific use of language in a specific social context.

• Etnography: focuses on the use of language in a particular place, not in a particular area of the language.

• Ethnolinguistics: studies the structure of language, focuses on a particular area of the language. (grammar, phonology, etc.)

• Dialect: a dialect is a variation of a language. Nevertheless, it is still the same language. Por ejemplo, el español hablado en México y el español que se habla en Argetina; a pesar de sus diferencias ambos son español.

• Accent: accent refers to phonological variations of a language.

• Idiolect: It is a person‘s specific, unique way of speaking

• Register: the way which a person speak, could be formal or informal.

• Speech community: a speech community is inside a dialect. It is spoken by a group of people that only understand the language if they are part of that community.

• Jargon: it is a group of words used in a specific field, mainly at work. Only people related to such field are

able to understand the jargon.

• Mutual intelligibility: It is a relationship of mutual understanding between different dialects. If two speakers speak differently but stillunderstand each other, they speakthe same language.

• Dialect continuum: a range of dialects that are mutually intelligible between their neighbours but toodifferent from those far away.

• Pidgin: it is a simplified language developed “because of a need”for understanding between two or more groups of different speakers. It is spoken by a group of people for a specific porpuse.

• Creole (language): It is a stable language that originated from a pidgin after several gerenations of use.

Bilingualism

Coordinated: languages are learned in two different geographyc places.

Compound: both languages are learned at the same place.

-Interference: use of

some words that you

have taken from

another language that

you speak.

-Code-switching:

when you are

speaking in a certain

language and

suddenly you switch

into a different

language.

Translation:

translation from one

language to another.

• Lingua Franca: a language that is widely used by speakers of different languages to communnicate with one another, mostly English.

English as spoken in the world

• Vernacular Language: the standard native language of a country or locality.

A variety of such everyday language specific to a social group or region: e.g. the vernaculars of New York City.

• Research question: main question; the basis of an investigation.

• Quantitative Approach: the investigation is based on getting results in numbers.

• Qualitative Approach: research based on getting results and data from interviews.