Relationship
between
Language
and Society
Warm Up
Questions
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Language and Society
• Language characterizes humanity and thus
society.
• It is first necessary to revisit what language is and
its relationship to society, for understanding
these matters is cornerstone to situating it in a
context which includes education.
Interrelationship between
Language and Society
Society shapes language.
- Language exists within a context.
- By context, we mean, language is guided by
details about the situation and culture that set
the rules and norms for its use and
understanding, even its formation.
Interrelationship between
Language and Society
Society shapes language.
- For example: If you are going to visit UP Los Baños, you
might wonder why some students call the attention of
jeepney drivers by pointing their finger upwards. We can
consider UP Los Baños as a smaller version of society; it has
its distinct culture that only those from within can
understand.
(In UP Los Baños, some dorms are located in the so-called upper campus, in
the mountainous Forestry area)
Interrelationship between
Language and Society
Language can be influenced by the dominant
values of a society.
- For instance, Filipinos are family-centered.
- We bring this aspect to our use of language; we refer
to strangers and non-relative through family names
such as “Tita” (for older women), “Kuya” (for younger
men), and such.
Interrelationship between
Language and Society
Another way of how society shapes
language is by history.
- What happens to society, forms or changes
language.
- The Filipino language that we currently have is a
product of our contacts with different foreigners.
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Society Affects Language
● Social structure may either
influence or determine linguistic
structure and/or behavior.
● Certain evidence may be
adduced to support this view
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Society Affects Language
Example:
● the age-grading phenomenon
whereby young children speak
differently from older children
and, in turn, children speak
differently from mature adults;
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Society Affects Language
● Studies which show that the
varieties of language that
speakers use reflect such
matters as their regional, social
or ethnic origin and possibly
even their sex (gender).
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● Sociolinguistics differs from
sociology of language in that
the focus of sociolinguistics is
the effect of the society on
the language, while the
sociology of language focuses
on language's effect on the
society.
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Sociolinguistics
(Society in Language)
● It is the descriptive study of the
effect of any and all aspects of
society, including cultural norms,
expectations, and context, on the
way language is used, and the
effects of language use on society.
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Sociolinguistics
(Society in Language)
● It also studies how language varieties
differ between groups separated by
certain social variables, e.g., ethnicity,
religion, status, gender, level of
education, age, etc., and how
● creation and adherence to these rules
is used to categorize individuals in
social or socioeconomic classes.
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Sociolinguistics
(Society in Language)
● As the usage of a language
varies from place to place,
language usage also varies
among social classes, and it is
these sociolects that
sociolinguistics studies.
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Language Affects Society
(Sociology of Language)
● Linguistic structure and/or
behavior may either influence
or determine social structure.
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Language Affects Society
(Sociology of Language)
● This is the view that is behind the Whorfian
hypothesis.
● The claim that the structure of a language
influences how its speakers view the world
is today most usually associated with the
linguist E.Sapir and his student B.L.Whorf.
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Language Affects Society
(Sociology of Language)
● Today the claim usually
referred to as the Sapir-
Whorf hypothesis or the
Whorfian hypothesis.
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Language Affects Society
(Sociology of Language)
● Sapir acknowledged the close relationship
between language and culture maintaining that
they were inextricably related so that you
could not understand or appreciate the one
without knowledge of the other.
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Language Affects Society
(Sociology of Language)
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