Sociolinguistics
Section A09
LIN 001Y – Winter 2017
Friday March 10, 2017
TA – Jeff Moran
Check yo’ self
Before Section
Agree
After Section
Disagree
Agree
Sociolinguists map language variation to social conditions.
Monolingual people use a single-style speech in their daily
encounters.
Only educated individuals use variety in their daily speech.
Our speech can indicate different aspects of our social identity.
The observer’s paradox doesn’t apply in sociolinguistic research
Recording/collecting sociolinguistic data secretly is part of
sociolinguistic interview
Disagree
What is sociolinguistics?
• Sociolinguistics is the study of the relationship between
language and society
• Sociolinguists assume that human society is made up of
related patterns and behaviors, some of which are
linguistic.
• Sociolinguists believe that language is used to establish
and maintain social relationships.
Discussion Question
Think of an example of language that is used to “maintain
social relationships.” How are the language and social
function related?
What is sociolinguistics?
 Sociolinguistics encompasses a broad range of concerns, including
bilingualism, pidgin, and creole languages, and other ways
that language use is influenced by contact among people of different
language communities.
• The social stigma or prestige associated with these variation
makes language a source of social and political power.
• Sociolinguists are interested in explaining why we speak differently
in different social situation.
What is sociolinguistics?
• For sociolinguist, the most important verity is that a language
is full of systematic variation
• This variation that can only be accounted for by socially
relevant forces and facts.
• Sociolinguists’ primary task is to map linguistic
variation to social conditions
• To sociolinguists, there is never a single-style or singlevariety speaker. Consider…
Why/when/how do we speak differently?
Ray:
Mom:
Ray:
Mom:
Ray:
Hey mom, what’s up?
Hi. You’re late for dinner.
Yeah, that douche chill TA kept us
hella late again. I fucRay! Your grandmother is here.
Oh shi- I mean, okay, cool. Where
is she?
Why/when/how do we speak differently?
• This dialogue shows that the way people’s talk is influenced by the
social context in which they are talking. It matters who can hear us
and where we are talking, as well as how we are feeling.
• The same message may be expressed very differently to different
people. For example…
Why/when/how do we speak differently?
Work with a partner to “rewrite” the scene and imagine that Ray
meets their grandmother when they walk in:
Grandma:
Ray:
Grandma:
Ray:
Grandma:
Ray:
Oh hello Ray, honey.
You’re late for dinner dear. What
happened?
Well I’m sorry to hear that.
Why/when/how do we speak differently?
• We also indicate aspects of our social identity
through the way we talk. Our speech provides
clues to others about:
• How we self-identify
• Where we have lived/been
• What we have been through
• Who we have interacted with
Discussion Question
Would this include intelligence? Why or why not?
Discuss what it means to be “articulate” and then
consider the following video…
What do sociolinguists study?
Sociolinguists are also interested in the different
types of linguistic variation used to express and
reflect social factors, including:
• Vocabulary/word choice
• Sounds
• Word structure/morphology
• Grammar/syntax
• Styles
• Dialects
Discussion Question
What unique phonetic features do
you hear in the following video?
Micro- vs. Macro-Sociolinguistic Inquiry
Micro-sociolinguistic
Connecting individual language
phenomena to larger communities
Creoles
Pidgins
Cultural/Racial
Gendered Speech
Age
Language Choice
Macro-sociolinguistics
Studies the whole of a
language or variety
Language Loss
Language Planning
Language Shift
Language Ideologies
Scope of Sociolinguistic Inquiry
Sociology of Language Areas of Investigation
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Code-Switching and Code-Mixing
Diglossia and Bilingualism
Language Spread
Language Loss
Language Maintenance
Language and Social Identity
Language Planning
Language Standardization
Data Collection Methods
Clandestine Recording
It refers to collecting sociolinguistic data secretly,without the
knowledge of the participants in a conversation
Sociolinguistic Interview
The sociolinguist talks to the subject and elicits examples of
various kinds of speech.
Non-Intrusive Responses
The researcher engages a person in real conversation
situation and writes down his/her finding immediately after
the interaction. A linguistic variable is usually identified
in this case.
Data Collection Methods
Ethnographic Observation
Refers to recording a conversation either at the same
time with a tape-recorder or recording it on paper
immediately after the interaction/event.
Questionnaires
Using a prepared list of questions to elicit data. A sample
collected this way is more open to statistical analysis.
The Observer’s Paradox
• Observer’s paradox refers to the situation where an
observer/researcher inherently influences how
people speak with each other.
• Language use is always sensitive to the social relations
among participants in a speech event.
• Our speech patterns regularly change when another
person enters the conversation.
Check yo’ self… again
Before Section
Agree
After Section
Disagree
Agree
Sociolinguists map language variation to social conditions.
Disagree
X
Monolingual people use a single-style speech in their daily
encounters.
X
Only educated individuals use variety in their daily speech.
X
Our speech can indicate different aspects of our social identity.
The observer’s paradox doesn’t apply in sociolinguistic research
Recording/collecting sociolinguistic data secretly is part of
sociolinguistic interview
X
X
X