Sociolinguistics

 Assignment

Name : Virani Dhara 

Course: M. A. English

Semester: 3

Batch: 2019-2021

Roll No: 4

Submitted to: Smt S. B. Gardi Department of English. 

Paper no : 12

Subject: English Language Teaching-1

Topic: Sociolinguistics

Introduction:

     Sociolinguistics examines the relationship between language use and the social world, particularly how language operates within and creates social structures. Studies in sociolinguistics explore the commonplace observation that everyone does not speak a language in the same way, that we alter our speech to accommodate our audience, and that we recognise members and non-members if our communities via speech. Sociolinguistics studies have looked at speech communities based on social categories such as age, class, ethnicity, gender, geography, profession and sexual identity. To be sure, such categories are fluid: they exist only in common text, and rather than standing independent of speech are generally produced through it. In short, these categories exist largely as a matter of social perception. 

Background

   Sustained interest in sociolinguistics emerged in the 1960s, in part as a reaction to ‘autonomous’ Chomskian linguistics. In place of the latter's idealised speaker, for whom social influences are idiosyncratic or irrelevant, the ‘hyphenated’ field of sociolinguistics sought to explore and theorise the language use of social beings. Capturing the interdisciplinary nature of the enterprise, a distinction is often made between micro-Sociolinguistics and micro-Sociolinguistics. 

Macro-sociolinguistics refers to research with a linguistic slant, often focusing on dialect and stylistic variation. Both quantitative and qualitative research methods have been employed to explore such linguistic phenomena as phonological differences between dialects or discourse variation between male and female speakers. In contrast, macro-sociolinguistics looks at the behaviours of entire speech communities, exploring issues such as why immigrant communities retain their native language in some social context but not in other, or how social identity can affect language choice. 

Research

This section explores those aspects of sociolinguistic research that have been particularly productive when viewed through the lens of L2 teaching and learning. For convenience’s sake, this work will be discussed within three subcategories: language variation, linguistic relativity and language in contact. 

# Language variation

  A significant outcome was that teachers were schooled in the origin and history of students’s native language variety and trained to recognise and address the systemic differences between this variety and the standard or prestige form. 

• Pidginisation is a process that results from contact of two or more language in a context where language needs can or must be satisfied through use of a simplified code. Examples include trading context or the interaction between colonised people and a conqueror. 

• Creolisation process, speakers develop an elaborated code that can accommodate the full range of life's function. 

• Decreolisation a gradual decreolisation process can occur as speakers incorporate features from a dominant language. 

 For L2 researchers, the notion of a continuum between a first language L1 and a ‘target language’ proved productive. A learner's simplified interlanguage – a concept developed by Corder and Selinker Selinker(1972) – could be seen to result from a pidginisation and decreolisation, as learners restructure their interlanguage and move towards an L2. One of several controversial issues is the explanation of sustained pidginisation. 

  Perhaps one of the most important finding of contemporary sociolinguistic research is the extent to which social categories interact. Examples are studies of the commonly held stereotypes that women speak more grammatically and are more polite than men. Building on this observation, Nichols underscores the contextual nature of language use when she speculates that ‘perhaps in traditional groups, or in different social situations for the same group, women will exhibit both conservative and innovative behavior. 

Freeman and McElhinny  survey the interaction of culture and gender with respect to politeness:

   In societies where politeness is normatively valued or seen as a skill, or where acquisition of politeness is not an automatic part of language learning but required additional training, men tend to be understood as more polite, and women are understood as impolite or too polite. 

 A wide variety of ways in which language and society intersect- in which we find social stratification of linguistic variables from phonology and syntax to discourse and narrative conventions -is documented in sociolinguistic research on:

• Age

• Ethnicity

• Gender

• Bergvall

• Geography

• Profession

• Sexual identity

• Social class

# Linguistic Relativity:

Research on cross-cultural miscommunication explores communicative failures occasioned by the fact that seemingly equivalent language can function quite different in different cultures. Thomas distinguishes between what she calls pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic failure. In the former, speakers fail to convey their meaning because the message's pragmatic force is misunderstood. A speaker might translate something from an L1 into a target language without the knowledge that the communicative conventions of the target language are quite different. For example, the formulaic expression ‘How are you? ‘ in English generally means little more than ‘Hello’.

    Hymes coined the term ethography of speaking to describe the task of the researcher who is ‘concerned with the situations and uses, the patterns andfunctions, of speaking’.

   Hymes termed communicative competence. Canale and Swain and Canale theorised four components of communicative competence. The last involves appropriate language use based on knowledge of sociocultural conventions and social context. Sociolinguistic knowledge involves sensitivity to issues of context and topic, as well as social parameters such as gender, age and social status. 

    The term discourse more broadly than did Canale and Swain. Scollon and Scollon's interdiscourse communicative refers to ‘the entire range of communications across boundaries of groups. 

# Language in Contact

  When speakers live in a linguistically diverse environment, several alternative to monolingualism are available to them. In a diglossic situation two languages or varieties of a language exist side by side, essentially in complementary distribution. Another contact phenomenon is code-switching, which occurs when bilingual speakers switch from one language to another in the same discourse. 

 Although common throughout the world, one example is the flexible Spanish-English code switching of Latinos in gAnglophone North America. As Myers -Scotton points out, code-switching patterns can announce speakers’ relationships to both language as well as their membership in a particular code-switching community. 

#Practice  

Language variation

 Students need to develop a critical understanding of the commonplace observation that the same language can be spoken differently by diverse speakers; moreover, the same speakers vary their language depending on which of their sociolinguistic identities is being called upon. 

When encountering an unfamiliar language/culture, students may be sending signals of which they are unaware. For example, it is widely reported anecdotally that female students studying an L2 with a male native speaker or men learning from a female instructor tend to approximate the pitch of their teachers rather than native speakers of their own gender. 

   These language students might want to be aware that their pitch will be a sociolinguistic maker, even if they decide that they decide that feel physically or psychologically more comfortable speaking slightly higher or lower than their native-speaking counterparts. 

# Linguistic Relativity

 As we have seen, language learning must go beyond grammatical competence if they are to be successful users of language. One area of sociolinguistic competence is the use of speech acts. As Cohen points out:

‘ Sorry about that!’ may serve as an adequate apology…. . … 

 Cohen notes that it may take many years to acquire native-like sociolinguistic competence and recommends classroom activities on speech acts. Adapted from Olstain and Cohen, he recommends five steps: assessment of students’ sociolinguistic awareness; presentation and discussion of dialogues focusing on sociocultural factors affecting speech acts; evaluation of situations that might require apologies or complaints. 

Languages in Contact

   Heath (1993) has been studying community-based youth groups that develop students’ linguistic virtuosity. Through dramas written, cast and directed by young people, inner-city youth retaun their L1 or dialect while gaining proficiency in ‘standard’ US English. 

   Rampton (1995) finds another kind of sociolinguistic dexterity in language crossing among urban adolescents in Britain who switch to non-hereditary forms. 

   Pratt uses the term contact zones for classrooms and other ‘social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power, such as colonialism, slavery, or their aftermaths. 

# Current and future trends and directions

   Some of the most exciting new work explores the relationship between identity and language learning. Much of this thinking has been influenced by post-structuralust critiques of traditionally conceived social categories. For example, in b place of fixed, a priori notions of class and gender, post-structuralust argue that social categories are fluid, that they are created and recreated at the moment of speech through speech, that we call occupy multiple subject positions and that individuals can and do resist the hierarchical positions in which they find themselves. 

  Canagarajah documents strategies on the parts of teachers and students that negotiate the role of local culture, politics, identity and language in the English class. As examples, teachers or students might code -switch to the local language to build solidarity; and students textbook graffiti can adapt unfamiliar North American figures to a Tamil context. Researchers like Canagarajah help teachers understand the complex strategies of language users in the English class. 

Work Citation:

• Coulmas, The Handbook of Sociolinguistics, 1997.
• Fasold,(1984) The Sociolinguistics of Society. 
• Fasold, (1990) The Sociolinguistics of Language. 
• Wolfson (1989) Sociolinguistics and TESOL.