CRITICAL BOOK REVIEW

SUBJECT SOCIOLINGUISTICS

COMPILED BY:

NAME : Dandi Rizki

NIM : 0304193152

CLASS : TBI-4 / SEM VI

SUBJECT : SOCIOLINGUISTICS

ENGLISH DEPARTMENT
FACULTY OF TARBIYAH AND TEACHER TRAINING
STATE ISLA MIC UNIVER SITY O F NORT H SUM A TERA
MEDAN
2022
 PREFACE

First of all, thanks to Allah SWT because of the help of Allah, writers
finished writing the CBR about “An Introducing Sociolinguistics.”

The purpose in writing this paper is to fulfill the assignment that to lecturer
in soclinguistics.

In arranging this paper, the writer trully get lots challenges and obstructions
but with help of many indiviuals, those obstructions could passed. Writer also
realized there are still many mistakes in process of writing this paper. Because of
that, the writers say thank you to all individuals who helps in the process of writing
this paper. Hopefully Allah replies all helps and bless you all of the writer realized
that.

This paper still imperfect in arrangement and the content so the writer hope
the criticism from the readers can help the writer in perfecting the next paper. Last
but not the least Hopefully, this paper can helps the readers to gain more knowledge
about sociolinguistics subject.

Medan, june of 2022

Author

Dandi Rizki

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 TABLE OF CONTENT

PREFACE ....................................................................................................... i

TABLE OF CONTENT .................................................................................. ii

CHAPTER 1 : BACKGROUND

1.1 INFORMATION BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................. 1

1.2 CONTENTS OF BOOK .................................................................... 2

CHAPTER 2 : SUMMARY

2.1 CHAPTER 5 ...................................................................................... 3

2.2 CHAPTER 6 ....................................................................................... 7

CHAPTER 3 : EVALUATION

3.1 STRENGTH ....................................................................................... 11

3.2 WEAKNESS ....................................................................................... 11

CHAPTER 4 : CLOSING

4.1 CONCLUSION .................................................................................. 12

4.2 SUGGESTION AND RECOMMENDATION .................................. 12

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 CHAPTER 1

BACKGROUND

1.1 Information of Bibliography

Writer’s names : Suzanne Romaine

Tittle : An Introducing Sociolinguistics
Year’s Publication : 2000
Amount Chapter : 13 chapter
Publisher : Oxford University Press
City : Oxford
Amount Page : 281

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1.2 Contents of Book

There are 8 chapter of this book, they are:

1. Chapter 1 : Language in Society/Society in Language
2. Chapter 2 : Language Choice
3. Chapter 3 : Sociolinguistic Patterns
4. Chapter 4 : Language and Gender
5. Chapter 5 : Language Change in Social Perperctive
6. Chapter 6 : Pidgin and Creole Languges
7. Chapter 7 : Linguistic Problem as Societal Problems
8. Chapter 8 : Conclusions
But in ithis Critical Book Review, I just review two chapter. That is
Chapter 5 : Language Change in Social Perperctive
Chapter 6 : Pidgin and Creole Languges

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 CHAPTER 2

SUMMARY

2.1 Chapter 5

Language Change in Social Perspective

an interesting case of linguistic change came to my attention. It seems that young

people in Sweden have begun using the word nörd (from American English nerd)

to refer to someone who is stupid. There is also an adjectival form nördig ‘nerdy’.

This new usage has been commented on by the newspapers and the radio, and some

of my Swedish colleagues began noticing it over the summer of 1991. After some

discussion, my colleagues and I concluded that nerd probably crossed the Atlantic

to Sweden via the American film Revenge of the Nerds, which was translated in

Swedish as Nördarna kommer ‘The nerds are coming’. Some young people have

apparently also picked up the word through visiting the United States. It has now

been noticed in Denmark too. The influence and prestige of American pop culture

on youth everywhere has no doubt been responsible for the introduction of a number

of new English words into other languages.

Dialectology and language change

Linguists have long been interested in language change. In the nineteenth century
the discipline of linguistics was understood in a historical sense and the main
preoccupations of the field were to study the development of languages over time.
Since those beginnings in the nineteenth century historical investigations of dialects
have made contributions of both theory and methods to the study of language
change. This work, which sees the spread of linguistic forms primarily in terms of
geographical space, provides a foundation for historical sociolinguistics. The early
studies done in Germany and France provided a basis for interpreting the linguistic
significance of the patterning of isoglosses.

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An isogloss represents the boundary of any linguistic feature or set of features
which separate one speech variety from another. Most importantly, however, from
a theoretical perspective such research seriously challenged prevailing views of
sound change.

Using the present to explain the past and the past to explain the present
Armed with the knowledge of how variability is embedded in social and linguistic
contexts in speech communities today, sociolinguists have tried to revitalize the
study of historical change by incorporating within it an understanding of these
sociolinguistic patterns. In other words, we can use the present to try to explain the
past, and the past to explain the present. It is now clear that variability is a
prerequisite for change. By extrapolating from the patterns of variation we find
today, we can make some predictions about the direction change is moving in. For
example, in later studies done by sociolinguists of the extent of influence of
standard, i.e. High, German on the speech of Germans living in various parts of the
country, we can see a dramatic advance of the standard /pf/ in Pfund etc. which is
replacing the older /p/ forms among the younger generation of southern
Rhinelanders. A study done of the speech of fifty men from the small town of Erp,
once mainly an agricultural area but now a modernized satellite of Cologne, showed
that the replacement of /v/ by standard /b/ in words such as bleiben ‘to remain’ is
much more frequent in formal speech than in everyday casual conversation.

This downward diffusion of more standard speech from the formal to casual styles
is what we would expect when standard and non-standard speech varieties are in
contact. Changes may also enter the standard variety, and when this happens, it is
usually from the bottom up, so to speak. They affect casual speech before more
formal styles

Language change and social ideology

Some of the most important changes affecting English and other European
languages since the 1970s have arisen from changes in society’s attitudes towards
women prompted by political activism. In many countries the use of non-sexist

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language is now legally mandated in certain quarters such as in job advertisements,
government publications, and media.

The New York Times, for example, stopped using titles like Mrs and Miss with the
names of women. At first, it resisted the adoption of the new title Ms, but eventually
the editor acknowledged that the Times believed it was now part of the language.
The London Times, however, still uses androcentric forms such as spokesman and
the titles Mrs and Miss, unless a woman has asked to be referred to as Ms. The Los
Angeles Times has adopted guidelines suggesting alternatives to language that may
be offensive to ethnic, racial, and sexual minorities. Such differences in policy are
signals of the social and political outlook of editors, who play important roles as
gatekeepers in determining which forms they will adopt and thereby help sanction
and spread.

At the moment, however, usage is still in flux and where choices exist, they are
symbolic of different beliefs and political positions. Compare Ms Johnson is the
chair(person) with Miss Johnson is the chairman. While a narrow linguistic
analysis would say they mean the same thing and refer to the same person who
happens to hold a particular position, choosing one over the other reveals approval
or disapproval of, for example, feminism, language reform, political conservatism
or liberalism. There is no way to maintain neutrality now. The existence of an
alternative forces a re-evaluation of the old one. With several alternatives available,
a woman can sometimes be referred to on the same occasion as Madame Chairman,
chairperson, and chairwoman, as I heard one male conference moderator do all in
the space of a few minutes without evidently being aware of it.

As another example of the effect of ideology on language change we can look at

some of the European languages other than English which have two forms for the
pronoun meaning ‘you’. One of the pronouns is reserved for use with persons higher
than the speaker in social status or persons with whom the speaker does not have a
close personal relationship. In many of these languages, such as French and
Swedish, the polite form is actually a plural form, while the intimate form is the
singular (cf. French tu/vous). In others such as German, the deferential form is the
same as the third person plural, Sie. Such systems of pronominal address have been

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called T/V systems, following the fact that in Latin and French, the familiar forms
begin with the letter T, and the polite forms with V. In fact, the French system
served as a model for other languages like Russian.

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2.2 Chapter 6

Pidgin and Creole Languages

In his speech to the English-speaking Union Conference in Ottawa, the Duke of
Edinburgh made reference to one of the best known pidgin and creole languages in
observing that he was ‘referred to in that splendid language as “Fella belong Mrs.
Queen”’. Although the Duke was right to consider Tok Pisin (‘talk pidgin’) spoken
in Papua New Guinea as a language rather than a dialect of English, he was wrong
about his designation. He would be called ‘man bilong kwin’. Contrary to what
many Europeans think about Tok Pisin, fella cannot be used in this way at all to
mean ‘man’ or ‘husband’, so the Duke’s statement is ungrammatical. Fella can be
used only as a suffix in Tok Pisin and has a number of grammatical functions, e.g.
to mark adjectives and numerals, as in tupela blakpela pik ‘two black pigs’, and to
mark the second person plural form of ‘you’, as in yupela i no ken go ‘you (plural)
cannot go’.

Origins and structure

The example of Pitcairn-Norfolk creole illustrates how the question of pidgin/
creole origins cannot easily be discussed separately from an account of their
structural characteristics. Creolists have proposed a variety of theories to explain
why the structures of pidgins and creoles show more similarities to one another,
regardless of their base language, than they do to their lexifier or base language. It
is in the area of syntax that the boldest claims have been made for the
distinctiveness of creoles. In fact, some time ago, scholars noted in connection with
Jamaican Creole that the most striking differences between the deepest varieties of
creole and those closest to English lay not so much in phonology and vocabulary
as in grammar. Although the reason offered by many was that creole grammar had
African origins, the conclusion was that basilectal (i.e. the deepest) Jamaican
Creole could not be regarded simply as a dialect of English, but was instead a new
and different language.

Syntax
Although it is possible to trace the origins of some vocabulary items such as kanaka
or savvy to the movements of people, the existence of common features of syntax
is not so easily explained by diffusion. For example, how do we explain the fact

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that a number of creoles use the same word to mark the grammatical functions of
both possession (‘have’) and existence (‘there is/are’)? In most English-based
creoles a form of the word get serves this function. Compare, for example, how one
would say ‘There is (existence) a woman who has (possession) a daughter’.

Morphology
The overall simplicity and regularity found in pidgins and creoles is a general
design feature, which reflects the function of these languages as lingua francas. In
fact, there is relatively little to be said about morphology in pidgins and creoles
since lack of it is one of the defining characteristics of the pidginization process.
The absence of highly developed inflectional morphology was generally equated
with lack of grammar and thought to reflect the primitiveness of both the language
and its speakers. Pidginization can entail loss of all bound morphology, many free
grammatical morphemes, and even a large part of the vocabulary.

Phonology
On the whole, the phonology of creoles has been less well investigated than their
syntax, and within the domain of phonology, there is scant information on
suprasegmental phenomena such as tone, stress, and intonation. Many have
commented that the suprasegmental phonology of the Atlantic English-based
creoles has been influenced by the tonal systems of the African substrate languages.
In Jamaican Creole, tone is lexical in a few minimal pairs. Thus, /at/ with a high
level tone means ‘hat’ or ‘hurt’, while with a high falling tone it means ‘heart’.
Another contrastive set is /bit/, which with a high level tone means ‘bit’ and with a
high falling tone means ‘beat’ or ‘beet’.

Lexicon
As noted earlier, pidgins and creoles generally take their names from their lexifier
language, even though there is a great deal of variation in terms of the extent to
which a particular language draws on its so-called lexifier for its vocabulary, and
there is a variety of problems in determining the sources of words, due to
phonological restructuring of the kind we have just examined. Compare, for
instance, the lexical composition of Sranan and Saramaccan, two of six so-called
English-based creoles spoken in Suriname, in what was formerly the Dutch-
controlled part of Guyana. In Saramaccan 50 per cent of the words are from English

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(e.g. wáka ‘walk’), with 10 per cent from Dutch (e.g. strei ‘fight’〈strijd), 35 per
cent from Portuguese (e.g. disá ‘quit’〈deixar), and 5 per cent from the African
substrate languages (e.g. totómbotí ‘woodpecker’). In Sranan only 18 per cent of
the words are of English origin, with 4.3 per cent of African origin, 3.2 per cent of
Portuguese, and 21.5 per cent of Dutch; 4.3 per cent could be derived from either
English or Dutch. Innovations comprise another 36 per cent, and 12.7 per cent have
other origins.

The creole continuum

The boundary between pidgins and creoles cannot be defined in purely linguistic
terms. Thus, some languages such as Tok Pisin and West African Pidgin English,
spoken widely in West Africa, may exist in both pidgin and creole forms, which
display different degrees of structural expansion and stability depending on whether
they are used by first or second language speakers. Creolization can take place at
any point during the pidgin’s life cycle, ranging from a jargon to an expanded
pidgin. The term ‘jargon’ refers to a speech variety with a minimal linguistic system
and great individual variation used for communicating in limited situations between
speakers of different languages, e.g. trade, while a pidgin has a certain degree of
stability

Pidgins and creoles in social context

Although pidgins and creoles are often widely used by the majority of the
population in the countries where they are spoken, throughout their history most
have not had any official status. In the Pacific, for instance, only Tok Pisin and
Bislama have received some official recognition. Tok Pisin is a de facto official
language in Papua New Guinea spoken by more than half of the population of 4
million. However, English is still the most widely used official medium of
education, despite initiatives in the 1990s to introduce education in a number of
vernacular languages. There is also another pidgin language, Hiri Motu (‘trade
Motu’), based on the indigenous language, Motu, which shares the same de facto
official status as Tok Pisin. In practice, all this means is that Hiri Motu and Tok
Pisin may be used in the House of Assembly, the country’s main legislative body.

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In fact, most business is conducted in Tok Pisin, the most widely shared language
among the members.

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 CHAPTER 3

EVALUATION

3.1 Strength

• The explanation is detail

• Some of chapter have tables to make a data explanation, so this is
make explanation clear
• Images are very helpful to make readers interested
• The composition of each chapter is neat do that the eyes do not
hurt
• Book also has references to make the reader know where are the
references of the content book and give the suggestion to it can to
motivate the reader to study more and know the important of study
this book

3.2. Weakness

• There is a word that is difficult to understand

• There is a language that is too difficult to understand
• Many typo in this book

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 CHAPTER 4

CLOSING

4.1 Conclusion

Within the perspective adopted in this book I have claimed that language
has no existence apart from the social reality of its users. Although language is a
precondition for social life, it does not exist on its own and it does not simply reflect
some pre-existing reality. I have tried to show how social and linguistic knowledge
are intertwined by looking at some of the various ways in which social differences
are encoded in speaker’s choices both of variants within what is thought of as one
language as well as between languages.

I commented in my preface that sociolinguistics lacked a convincing

theoretical model within which to situate and explain its findings. While
sociolinguists have shown the importance of heterogeneity and developed methods
for analyzing it, they have not really ‘explained’ it. There has been some confusion
in sociolinguistic discussions about cause and effect, particularly in studies making
use of quantitative analysis which establishes correlations between certain social
and linguistic variables

4.2 Suggestion

From this paper writer hope that readers can benefit from the paper make
and this paper can provide additional knowledge for readers. Writer hope the
readers can search other reference except the book writer written to add knowledge
because reference is important to builds the paper. Writer hope this paper can help
the readers.

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