What is sociolinguistics?

“The study of language in society” would be a vague definition of the discipline; there is a social
and contextual dimension to every naturally occurring use of language, and the social factors are
determinant for the choices and the forms of the language comprehension.
A more accurate definition could be “the study of the linguistic indicators of culture and power”,
that emphasize the social force of language events in the world. Influences of ethnicity, gender,
ideology and social rank on language events are shown through this perspective, which means that
it is possible to be descriptive with pieces of language in the world recognizing that we are all
included. It may be argued that sociolinguistics’ responsibility is to use their privileged knowledge
to influence the direction of the language policies and practices. There are, for example, many
sociolinguistics that disagree with this ethically-involved position. The fact is that most of the
studies are descriptive and aim towards a scientific objectivity, but, if we realize that this same
scientific objectivity is the result of a social construction, their apparent neutrality becomes a
political position. Most studies focus on the account of statistics and develops with the changing
relations between language and society.
So, sociolinguistics is the study of language variation and language change, because societies differ
from each other and change over time, and language is bound up with the processes.
Two dimensions can be seen: the historical or “diachronic” axis, which is concerned with the ways
in which language has changed over time; and a snapshot of a moment in time, on the “syncrhonic”
axis.

Issues

Researchers collect examples of language usage in their naturally occurring environment and study
them in relation to the findings of other sociolinguistics’ research work. It is a truly example of
applied linguistics: there is no introspection, intuitive conclusions or impressionistic evaluation
involved. It is a sort of practical investigation. Carmen Llamas techniques illustrates this.

1. Categorizing the ways people speak

1.1. Idiolect and sociolect

Idiolect: when individuals speak in characteristic way that might be peculiar to them in certain
circumstances.
Sociolect: Use of language in ways shared with many other people. The sociolects help us to define
people as a coherent social group.

Sociolinguistics is mainly interested in the different forms of sociolect, in suggesting patterns and
frameworks by which such sociolects seems to operate. It is a process of generalization away from
the detail of specific data. The fact that social patters are made explicit can be of immense value in
understanding the place of individuals in society.

1.2. Standard, non-standard and codification

A potential conflict might result from the tension between the standard and non-standard varieties.
Standardization is a process in which one variety of a particular language is taken up and promoted
as the “standard” form; this involves prescribing its use in education, media and law publications
and treating it as the “correct” and “proper” form of the language. “Codification” is a prominent
feature of standard forms: grammar books, dictionaries, religious and cultural texts, canonical
literature or school books are written promoting the standard form.
1.3. Prestige, stigmatization and language loyalty

By contrast, other forms of language are treated as “poor” or “incorrect” varieties; they are
stigmatized by the “prestige” of the standard forms. Questions to notice and measure the factors of
prestige and stigmatization, that depends much on the attitudes of the speakers to their own variety.
- Has the variety been “standardized” and codified institutionally?
- Is the variety spoken by a “living community” of speakers?
- Do the speakers have a sense of the long “history” of their variety?
- Do the speakers consider their variety to be independent of other forms and “autonomous”?
- Do the speakers use the variety of all social functions and in all contexts or does it have a “reduced
scope” of usage?
- Do the speakers consider their variety “pure” or a “mixture” of other forms?
- Are there “unofficial” rules of the variety, even where there is no codified grammar bool; is there a
sense of a “good” and “bad” form?

1.4. Dialect, Accent and language planing

A standardized variety is usually a regional “dialect”, which has been elevated n prestige and often
loses its regional associations as a result. It refers to the characteristic patterns of words and word
order (lexico grammar) which are used by a group of speakers. It usually refers just to the form of
the lexico-grammar of the variety as it could be written down. Its pattern of pronunciation is called
“accent”, and can be also standardized and stigmatized. In principle, any dialect can be spoken in
any accent. Is important to realize that every form of spoken language is uttered as a dialect and in
an accent. Denying having and accent means speaking in standardized and prestigious accent.

1.5. Speech communities

The way people speak often serves to define them as a group. The coherence generated by all other
social factors, including the linguistic, can operate as a self-serving reinforcement of all sorts of
social values to do with local or community or ethnic identity. Language variants can be maintained
and reinforced in this way, even against standardization pressure.

2. Descriptive tools of language variation

Traditionally, linguistics has categorized the different dimensions of language as a rank scale, from
the smallest units of individual sounds or letters up to the largest scale of whole texts and
discourses. Each of these levels often corresponds to a linguistic sub-discipline. Sociolinguistics
have focused on the phonological level patterns, because is easier to find an occurrence of a sound
and the variation is often below the level of awareness of speakers.
2.1. The linguistic variable

It is the main tool in sociolinguistics: any single feature of language which could be realized by
different choices. It could be a sound, a word, a phrase or a pattern of discourse.

2.2. Phonological variation

Observing and recording occurrences of individual sounds is very much easier than waiting around
all day for a particular word, structure or discourse pattern to appear, or setting up a complicated
and artificial test situation. And mostly, because sounds come directly from the bodies, so they are
below the level of conscious awareness.
In order to describe accents precisely, sociolinguistics use the International Phonetic Alphabet
(IPA), which is a system of special letters that corresponds to a very particular sound.

2.3. Grammatical Variation

Centrality in the social group of speech community is often marked by the frequent use of certain
realizations of linguistic variables.

2.4. Lexical Variation

Dialectical variation depends largely in different lexical items being used from region to region
2.5. Discoursal variation

Variability in discourse organization is a very fruitful area of investigation at the moment. Strategies
of conversational structure can be observed and analysed. For example, the way politicians try to
dominate the discussion; the ways than men and women organize narratives or conduct
conversations or arguments to show different objectives in speech; the way politeness or solidarity
organize, that gender studies have analyzed in comparative studies.

2.6. Linguistic Variation

Bilingual or multilingual individuals can often move from one language to another within a single
utterance and sometimes within a sentence. This is called “code-switching”. Sociolinguistics
explore the alternations in plurilingual contexts and deliberate attempts by governments and
authorities to engage in language planning: the promotion and standardization of one variety of
language, and attempted interventions in linguistic usage. Also explores the birth and death of
languages, for example in the development of “pidgin” languages (new ones, often based on two or
more languages in contact, with their own systematic grammatical rules). When the pidgin become
the first language of a new generation, they are called “creoles”.

3. Social factors that correlate with language variation.

3.1. Geographical and social mobility

Dialects with a language are often localized geographically. We can speak of “dialect chains” where
the shift from one dialect to the next is not sudden between one town or country or state and the
next. Instead, dialects merge and overlap across distances.
Towns and cities complicates matters further. The migration into urban areas disrupted dialect
divisions, and the study of “urban dialectology” was only achieved by the realization that there is
social stratification in urban areas on the basis of class. A new phenomena occurs when a social
group aims for a more prestigious form of language, overdoing an accent in formal situations:
“hypercorrection”. The counterpart is when people use stigmatized forms of language: “cover
prestige”.

3.2. Gender and power

The influence of gender and asymmetries in power relations have been a major aspect of
sociolinguistic discussion in recent years. The notion of a “genderlect” has been proposed to
account for the systematic differences in the ways patriarchal language manipulates the uses of
language in order to standardize the male privileged speech. This can be observed across the whole
range of linguistics variables, from plans of narrative and discourse organization to the different
accents in the same area.

3.3. Age

Differences of uses between ages can reveal evidence of changes in the language over time; even
can give us the ability to observe potential change in progress.

3.4. Audience

Taking into account the audience and reception of language use provides insights into the ways
speakers behave. Most conversations have a “recipient design”: speakers plan their utterances with
the addressee in mind. They adjust their accent, style or language towards their addressees. This
phenomenon is called “accommodation”.

3.5. Identity

People’s conscious awareness of their personal, ethnic, geographical, political and family identities
is often a factor in their language use.

3.6. Social Network relations

Relative strength of relations between individuals within a social group is important in order to
understand how linguistic features are maintained, reinforced and spread.

4. Working with sociolinguistic Data

4.1. Collecting and analysing data

The fieldworker must be aware of a range of issues involved in “sampling” and the
“representativeness” of the population surveyed. Among the “experimental” forms of elicitation that
can be used are interviews, questionnaires, thinking out loud protocols/think-aloud protocols
(TL/TAP) given with a passage to read, role-play and storytelling. Also uses techniques that have
increasing degrees of informant self-awareness, like the semantic map.
The “observer paradox” is a fact in this field: people alter their linguistic behaviour when observed.

4.2. Interpreting sociolinguistic data

- Why does language variation exist?

4.3. Models and frameworks

The causes and effects of language change are central concerns of sociolinguistics. In seeking the
motivation for language change, we must consider whether the changes are internal or external to
the linguistic system. Internal ones are “system-based”, brought about by pressures to the linguistic
system. External changes are “speaker-based”, brought about by speakers adopting forms from
other varieties. Accommodation can become permanent if contact-based changes happens
sufficiently permanent.

5. Applications

A practical application should be the main objective. Sociolinguistics has informed the thinking of
government policy on education and language planning across the world, with insights from the
field finding their way directly into teacher-training courses and educational programmes to
improve society in many ways. Also actors imitating accents could come from this, or criminal
caught; politicians, media and advertisement trainers learn discourse patterns to convince; it has
been useful also to historiography and in the research of ethics and in the use of naturalistic data in
linguistic study.