WHAT IS SOCIOLINGUISTICS?

Sociolinguistics is a term including the aspects of linguistics applied toward the connections between language and society, and the way we use it in different social situations. It ranges from the study of the wide variety of dialects across a given region down to the analysis between the way men and women speak to one another. Sociolinguistics often shows us the humorous realities of human speech and how a dialect of a given language can often describe the age, sex, and social class of the speaker; it codes the social function of a language. Language Variation Internal Variation: the property of languages having different ways of expressing the same meaning. Importantly, this refers to within language, not across language, differences. An example of internal variation in English is "ask" vs. "aks". Language variety: This is a general term that may be used at a number of levels. So, we can use the term to distinguish between English and French, but we can also use the term to distinguish between two varieties of English, such as New York City English vs. Appalachian English. Dialect: This is a complex and often misunderstood concept. For linguists, a dialect is the collection of attributes (phonetic, phonological, syntactic, morphological, semantic) that make one group of speakers noticeably different from another group of speakers of the same language. DIALECT is NOT a negative term for linguists . Often times, for example, we hear people refer to non-standard varieties of English as "dialects", usually to say something bad about the non-standard variety (and thus about the people who speak it). The term dialect refers to ANY variety of a language. Thus, by definition, we all speak a dialect of our native language. DIALECT is NOT synonymous with accent. Accent is only a part of dialectal variation. Non-linguists often think accents define a dialect (or that accents alone identify people as non-native or foreign language speakers). Also, non-linguists tend to think that it's always the "other" people that have "an accent". So, what is "accent"? ACCENT: This term refers to phonological variation, i.e. variation in pronunciation Thus, if we talk about a Southern Accent, we're talking about a generalized property of English pronunciation in the Southern part of the US. But, Southern dialects have more than particular phonological properties. Accent is thus about pronunciation, while dialect is a broader term encompassing syntactic, morphological, and semantic properties as well.

Speech Communities: A speech community is a group of people who speak a common dialect. Linguists working on language variation often characterize speech communities in terms of extra-linguistic factors, i.e. along ethnic or geographical lines. While this can be useful and can shed light on the hows and whys of dialect variation, it is important to note that the linguists who do this KNOW that there is really no such thing as a pure dialect spoken only by a particular ethnic group or by people from just one perfectly definable region. In large part, people are in contact with one another and with many varieties of a language. For example, the book Language Files gives you an example of speech from an older man with many well known characteristics of Appalachian English: 1) I used to could read. (double modal) 2) I ain't no girl now. (multiple negation) 3) He has a broken back ____ was never set. ("that" deletion) 4) Put some bakin' sody on it. (sody instead of soda) 5) I fell upside of the building. (lexical substitution--upside of for against the side of) What they point out, though, is that the speaker is a native of Southern Ohio, not actually a native of Appalachia. And his speech is affected by factors such as age, sex, and socio-economic status. A dialect is a variety of a language. A speech community is the group of people who speak the dialect. What makes a particular group of people speak a particular dialect has to do with a number of factors which may play a more or less significant role in any particular case. These include socio-economic status, ethnicity, sex, and geographical location. Language and Socioeconomic Status One of the most persistent and pernicious misunderstandings of the concept dialect revolves around the problem of standard vs. nonstandard varieties of a language. Before we discuss this problem in a bit more detail, let's make sure the big picture is clear. Specifically, let's break the problem down into two categories: the WRONG view, and the RIGHT view. THE WRONG VIEW A language is composed of a "standard" dialect from which all of the other non-standard dialects emerge. The standard dialect is the "correct" way to speak the language. The other dialects represent erroneous or inferior ways of speaking the language. The non-standard language is more complex, more logical, more expressive than the non-standard dialects. Non-standard dialects are a product of "lazy" speech.

THE RIGHT VIEW

Languages have various dialects. There are actually a range of varieties that people consider to be standard. So, Bill Clinton speaks the "standard" and so do I, but my dialect is clearly NOT the same as Clinton's. What is considered standard is associated with prestige, a non-linguistic factor. From a linguistic standpoint, what is considered standard has NOTHING to do with correctness or superiority. From a linguistic standpoint, ALL DIALECTS are equally correct, equally expressive, equally complex, equally logical and so forth. That is, the term non-standard dialect means just that, not the standard dialect. It DOES NOT MEAN inferior or sub-standard. Non-standard dialects are not simply offshoots from the standard. That is, don't think of non-standard dialects simply as daughters of some standard variety. This is important, because when we compare non-standard and standard dialects people tend to think that the properties of the nonstandard have evolved out of the standard. This is not the case. Nonstandard and standard dialects taken together simply make up the range of dialects that constitute a language.

Who Talks More, Men or Women? A common cultural stereotype describes women as being talkative, always speaking and expressing their feelings. Well, this is probably true, however, do women do it more than men? No! In fact an experiment designed to measure the amount of speech produced suggested that men are more prone to use up more talking time than women. An experiment by Marjorie Swacker entailed using three pictures by a fifteenth century Flemish artist, Albrecht Durer which were presented to men and women separately. They were told to take as much time as they wanted to describe the pictures. The average time for males: 13.0 minutes, and the average time for women 3.17 minutes. Why is this? Sociolinguists try to make the connection between our society and our language in a way that suggests that women talk less because it has not always been as culturally acceptable as it has been for men. Men have tended to take on a more dominant role not only in the household, but in the business world. This ever-changing concept is becoming less applicable in our society, however, the trend is still prominent in some societies across the world. It is more acceptable for a man to be talkative, carry on long conversation, or a give a long wordy speech, however it is less acceptable for a women to do so. It has been more of a historical trend for men have more rights to talk. However , it is common for men to be more silent in situations that require them to express emotion. Since childhood, they have been told to "keep their cool" and "remain calm, be a man."

Do Men and Women Really Speak Differently? Sometimes comment like these may be extremely stereotypical, however it is easy for any one to identify who the speaker is. In English we laugh at these utterances, however in some languages there are gender-exclusive speech patterns for men and women respectively. It is not uncommon to see these speech patterns cross-culturally to linguistically the gender of the speaker. Edward Sapir documented such occurrences in Yana, an American Indian language, where there are distinct words that are used for men and women respectively.