Welcome to the postgraduate Sociolinguistics course 2015 COURSE DESCRIPTION Sociolinguistics is concerned with the investigation of the relationships between linguistic phenomena and human social organization and social life This course focuses on the central theoretical approaches to the stud ID: 406469
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Slide1
Sociolinguistics
Welcome to the postgraduate Sociolinguistics course 2015Slide2
COURSE
DESCRIPTION
Sociolinguistics is concerned with the investigation of the relationships between linguistic phenomena and human social organization and social life. This course focuses on the central theoretical approaches to the study of language and society that have developed over the last five decades:
variational
sociolinguistics, the ethnography of communication, and interactional sociolinguistics. These will be explored through the accounts provided in the textbook (
Wardhaugh
:
Sociolinguistics
) and through other chapters and influential scholarly papers that exemplify the goals and methods of these approaches. In addition, a variety of other topics will be covered, including the development of pidgins and creoles, multilingualism, globalization and language status, language choice, and aspects of language and culture
.Slide3
Although most of the language data considered in this course will be drawn from the English language and British and American cultures, the sociolinguistics of other languages and cultures, including Arabic, will also be examined
.
Prerequisites: Students enrolled in this course must have taken an introductory linguistics course before the start of the course.Slide4
Objectives
The course is designed to:
increase students' awareness of the ways that language and social contexts interact and develop their ability to explain some of these interactions to other people both other linguists and the general public.
increase students' understanding of concepts, terminology, and research paradigms which are important in understanding sociolinguistic work.
strengthen students' ability to apply sociolinguistic principles and research in teaching, translation, workplace, and everyday situations. Slide5
give
students practice with some analytical techniques
in sociolinguistic work
allow
students
to focus more detailed attention on a single sociolinguistic topic
.
investigate intersections between the linguistic theory students already know, new concepts from sociolinguistic theory, and social
theory.
learn
how to recognize and isolate the sociolinguistic variable, and study the external and internal pressures that affect its occurrence. See how the use of linguistic forms interact with key social categories such as socio-economic status, gender and age, and individual-level factors.Slide6
recognize
variation as a natural part of language. Develop skills for finding the linguistic variation in all levels of the
grammar.
Investigate
the relationship between social structure and language
attitudes
gain
familiarity with the terminology, methods, and literature of
sociolinguistics
develop
skills for critiquing
both sociolinguistic
literature and common language
attitudes.Slide7
Most of the language data will be drawn from the English language and American as well as English cultures, The module will also examine the
Sociolinguistics
of other languages and cultures, mainly Arabic.Slide8
Required Texts
Wardhaugh
, R. 1986,
An Introduction to Sociolinguistics,
Oxford: Basil Blackwell
Wardhaugh
, Ronald. 2010. An Introduction to Sociolinguistics (6th ed.)
Malden, MA and Oxford, UK:
Wiley-Blackwell
Bell
, Allan (2014).
The Guidebook to Sociolinguistics
.
Malden,MA
:
Wiley
Blackwell
.
Selected
readings from articles available through students' own research abilities and the university library.Slide9
course
contents
Sessions/ Lectures
Topics
Week 1
An Introduction to Sociolinguistics
The Scientific Investigation of Language
Relationship between language and society
Sociolinguistics and sociology of linguistics
Week 2
Language and Dialect
Register and Style
Week 3Pidgin and Creole- An IntroductionTheories of origin of pidgin to CreoleSlide10
Week 4
Language Diversity and Speech Communities
Bilingualism and Multilingualism
Dimensions, Manifestations and Effects of Bilingualism
Week 5
Diaglossia
and Bilingualism
Language Choice: Domain Theory
Code choice: Code-switching, Code-mixing
Week 6
Borrowing
Difference between Code-switching and Borrowing
Social Factors involved in Code-switching and Borrowing Week 7
Variation and Change
Regional Variation
Relating Linguistic Variation to Social VariationSlide11
Week 8
Presentations & Mid Term Examination
Week 9
Language, Culture and Thought
Linguistic and Cultural relativity
Language and Thought
The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
Week 10
Social Functions of Language
Solidarity and Politeness
Tu
and
Vous
Address Terms
Week 11
Presentations
Week 12
Presentations
Discussion on AssignmentsSlide12
Week 13
Language and Gender 1
Male-Female Language Differences
Language and Gender 2
Linguistic inequality
Week 14
Discourse Analysis
Power and Ideology in Language
Week 15
Stereotypes
Analysing
Discourse- News Article
New, National and International
Englishes
Week 16
Ethnography and Ethno-methodology
Conversational Style
Asymmetrical Talk
RevisionSlide13
Evaluation
Evaluation will be based on individual and group quizzes, applications, 1 small research project and a final exam. Graduate students are expected to also complete 2 article reviews in the field of sociolinguistics.
Evaluation:
20%Class
participation and
quizes
10%Presentations
on sociolinguistics topics
20% Final Paper and articles.
50% final examSlide14
N.B. The instructor reserves the right to make slight modifications to the schedule
as necessary
. However, you will be advised well in advance of any changes.Slide15
References:
Bell, A. (1984) Language style as audience design. In
Coupland
, N. and A.
Jaworski
(1997, eds.)
Sociolinguistics: a reader and
coursebook
, pp. 240-50. New York: St. Martin’s Press Inc.
Bell, A. (2007) Style and the linguistic repertoire. In Llamas, Carmen,
Mullany
, Louise, and
Stockwell, Peter (eds.) The Routledge Companion to Sociolinguistics, pp. 95-100. London: Routledge.Slide16
Chambers, J.K. (2002) Sociolinguistic Theory. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Cheshire, Jenny. (2004) Sex and Gender in
Variationist
Research. In Chambers, J.K.,
Trudgill
, Peter, and Schilling-Estes, Natalie (eds.)
The Handbook of Language Variation and Change
, pp. 423-443. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Coulmas
, Florian. (2001) Sociolinguistics. In
Aronoff
, Mark and Rees-Miller, Janie (eds.)
The Handbook of Linguistics, pp. 563-581. Malden, MA: Blackwell.Coupland, N. (2001) Language, situation and the relational self: theorizing dialect-style in sociolinguistics. In P. Eckert and J. Rickford (eds) Style and Sociolinguistic Variation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 185-210.Slide17
Eckert, Penelope. (2004.
)
The meaning of style. in
Wai
-Fong Chiang, Elaine Chun, Laura
Mahalingappa
,
Siri
Mehus
eds. Salsa 11. Texas Linguistics Forum. 47
Eckert, P. (1998) Gender and sociolinguistic variation. In Coates, J. (ed.)
Language and Gender: a reader. Oxford, UK: Blackwell, pp. 64-75.Fasold, R. (1993) Address Forms, The sociolinguistics of language, ch 1. Oxford, UK: Blackwell, pp. 1-38.Gal, S. (1978) Peasant men can’t get wives: language change and sex roles in a bilingual community, Language in Society, 7(1), pp. 1-16.Hazen, K., Hamilton, S. and Vacovsky, S. (2011) The fall of demonstrative them: evidence from Appalachia. English World-Wide 32:1, pp. 74-103.Slide18
Labov
, W. (1972a) The linguistic consequences of being a lame,
Language in the inner city
,
ch.
7. Philadelphia: U Pennsylvania, pp. 255-292.
Labov
, W. (1972b) The social stratification of (r) in New York City department stores. In
Sociolinguistic Patterns
. Philadelphia: U Pennsylvania, pp. 43-69.
Labov
, W. (1972c) The study of language in its social context.
In Giglioli, P.P. (ed.) Language and Social Context. Harmondsworth: Penguin, pp. 283-98.Llamas, Carmen. (2007) Age. In Llamas, Carmen, Mullany, Louise, and Stockwell, Peter (eds.) The Routledge Companion to Sociolinguistics, pp. 69-76. London: Routledge.Milroy, James. (2007) The ideology of the standard language. In Llamas, Carmen, Mullany, Louise, and Stockwell, Peter (eds.) The Routledge Companion to Sociolinguistics, pp. 133-139. London: Routledge.Slide19
Milroy, J. and Milroy, L. (1978) Belfast: Change and variation in an urban vernacular. In P.
Trudgill
, (ed.),
Sociolinguistic patterns in British English
. London: Edward Arnold, pp. 19-36.
Preston, D.R. (1986) Five visions of America.
Language in Society
, 15(2), pp. 221-240.
Purnell
, T.,
Idsardi
, W., and Baugh, J. (1999) Perceptual and phonetic experiments on American English dialect identification,
Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 18(1), pp. 10-30.Rickford, J.R. and Rickford, R.J. (2000) History. Spoken Soul: the story of Black English. New York: John Wiley and Sons, pp. 129-160.Slide20
Roberts, Julie. (2004) Child language variation. In Chambers, J.K.,
Trudgill
, Peter, and Schilling-Estes, Natalie (eds.) The Handbook of Language Variation and Change, pp. 333-348. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Sankoff
, Gillian &
Blondeau
,
Hélene
(2007). Language change across the lifespan: /r/ in Montreal French. Language 83:3, pp. 560-588.
Smitherman
, G. (1998) Ebonics, King, and Oakland: Some folk don’t believe fat meat is greasy, Journal of English Linguistics, 26(2), pp. 97-107.
Trudgill
, Peter. Introducing Language and Society, London: Penguin. 1992.London: Routledge.) 11th Chapter of the Text BookSlide21
Tuten
, Donald N. (2007)
Koineization
. In Llamas, Carmen,
Mullany
, Louise, and
Stockwell
, Peter (eds.) The Routledge Companion to Sociolinguistics, pp.
Wolfram
, W. (1998a) Language ideology and dialect: understanding the Ebonics controversy.
Journal of English Linguistics
, 26(2), pp. 108-121.
Wolfram, W. (1998b) Scrutinizing linguistic gratuity: issues from the field, Journal of Sociolinguistics, 2(2), pp. 271-279.Wolfram, W., and Schilling-Estes, N. (1998) American English, ch. 4. Dialects in the US: past, present, and future. Oxford, UK: Blackwell, pp. 90-123.Slide22
Language is all around you. It can make you laugh, make you cry, convey your emotions, make things happen. You use it every day, and have been doing since you were a very young child – even before you could tie your own shoelaces. It's an essential part of what makes us human. Using language is one of the most amazing things we do.
Have you ever stopped to wonder where language came from, or even what kind of things you really know as a speaker of one or more languages?Slide23
Language as communication
Language as Text.
The Interaction of
People.
The Interpretation of
Texts.
What do you communicate? Ideas? Emotions? Intentions?
How do you communicate?
Messages:
The interpretation of
messages.
The construction of
messages.Slide24
Sociolinguistics is the study of the relationship between language and society.
What is Sociolinguistics?Slide25
Sociolinguistics is the study of how language serves and is shaped by the social nature of human beings. In its broadest conception, sociolinguistics analyzes the many and diverse ways in which language and society entwine. This vast field of inquiry requires and combines insights from a number of disciplines, including linguistics, sociology, psychology and anthropology.Slide26
Sociolinguistics examines the interplay of language and society, with language as the starting point. Variation is the key concept, applied to language itself and to its use. The basic premise of sociolinguistics is that language is variable and changing. As a result, language is not homogeneous — not for the individual user and not within or among groups of speakers who use the same language.Slide27
By studying written records, sociolinguists also examine how language and society have interacted in the past. For example, they have tabulated the frequency of the singular pronoun
thou
and its replacement
you
in dated hand-written or printed documents and correlated changes in frequency with changes in class structure in 16
th
and 17
th
century England. This is historical sociolinguistics: the study of relationship between changes in society and changes in language over a period of time.Slide28
Sociolinguistics can help us understand why we speak differently in various social contexts, and help uncover the social relationships in a community.
For example, you probably wouldn't speak the same to your boss at work as you would your friends, or speak to strangers as you would to your family.
Sociolinguistics may also wonder whether women and men speak the same as each other.
Or why do people the same age or from the same social class or same ethnicity use similar language?
Sociolinguistics attempts to explain all these questions and more.
Ultimately, sociolinguistics is
everywhere!Slide29
To explain all these questions there are many different
micro
and
macro
approaches of sociolinguistics such as:
Interactional Sociolinguistics
Variationist
Sociolinguistics
Historical sociolinguistics
Dialectology - this is equally similar to the study of different
Varieties of English
Discourse Analysis
Conversation AnalysisLanguage planning and policySlide30
Sociolinguistics is a move towards studying
language performance,
and there are two arguments on why this should be studied within language:
Language is an interactive and cultural phenomenon which should be studied.
Actual language use is highly structured and not at a random.
These arguments split into
two strands of sociolinguistics:
Interactional Sociolinguistics
Variationist
SociolinguisticsSlide31
How is Sociolinguistics studied?
1. General facts about the study of sociolinguistics
.
There are two approaches to the study of sociolinguistics 'micro' and 'macro'.
Micro Sociolinguistics
Macro Sociolinguistics
They look at social and linguistic influence on specific linguistic features. They are interested in the individual differences and the way they are used e.g. the variation between 'singing' and '
singin
''.
They look at language and communication more generally. The focus is on the wider scale which allows
generalisations
to be made and conclusions to be identified.
Eg:the choices made about conversational structure or a trend amongst a large sampleSlide32
Competence
Vs
Performance
Sociolinguistics focuses on
'linguistic performance'.
It is studied in relation to the actual language that is produced and the way it is used in its wider social context.
As a fairly new discipline areas of inquiry in the past primarily studied language in relation to
'linguistic competence'.
Competence- Study Of Language in relation to:
Performance- Study of Language in relation to:
Linguistic competence refers to the knowledge of grammar and to the I-Language which is the internal system within the mind.
Linguistics performance refers to the use of knowledge and to E-Language which is the external reflection of language.Slide33
2. Methods and Applications Slide34
Who does Sociolinguistics?
As Sociolinguistics is such a broad topic, many people are taking an interest into it today.
You and the community you live in will relate to sociolinguistics, because you alter your language depending on who you talk to. This variation doesn't make you a Sociolinguist personally, but it gives researchers a focus of study when researching this discipline, as many people wonder what are the causes for variation within speech.
As mentioned in
What is Sociolinguistics?
, different researchers take different views within the discipline, and this means a wide range and different research is collected in this field of study.Slide35
.
Sociolinguistic Researchers
variationists
interactional
Zimmerman and west
Jenny Cheshire
penelope
williamSlide36
When is Sociolinguistics studied?
This timeline gives an overview of how the study sociolinguistics has developed over time.Slide37
Where is sociolinguistics studied?
Sociolinguistics has been studied at different times all around the world. Here is a snippet of its global profile.
INDIA
[1]
When?
5BCE, 50BCE, 500CE
What?
Very early studies conducted on language variation in relation to society.
GERMANY
[2]
When?
Late 1800s
What? Dialectology research (differences in grammar and word pronunciation)Slide38
AMERICA
When?
20th century onwards
What?
General development and expansion upon the view point that linguistic research should focus on
actual language productions
(performance) of the speaker.
Who?
Key researchers behind interaction sociolinguistics, John J.
Gumperz
and Dell
Hymes
produced their pivotal paper 'Directions in Sociolinguistics: The Ethnography of Communication' in 1972.[3]But... the main researcher in America, and the name you'll hear the most in this topic is... William Labov. He worked on variationist sociolinguistics in the USA, looking into phonological (pronounciations or accents) variation and how this played out in relation to society. In 1963 Labov looked at variation in Martha's Vineyard and this study became the fundamental, groundbreaking study in sociolinguistics.Labov's influence has encouraged many other academics from the US to undertake work in the field, including Penelope Eckert.Slide39
Why is Sociolinguistics
studied?
Paul Cooper, PhD Student in
Socioliguistics
from The University of Sheffield explains his top 5 reasons why sociolinguistics is useful and why we study it.Slide40
Sociolinguistics is interested in explaining
reasons for speaking differently in different social situations
It also looks at how language is used to convey a
social meaning
Due to its constant use, either spoken or written, it is important to understand
behaviour
and
attitudes
towards language
Behaviour
towards language is a concern shared on an international level by political and educational leaders, as well as the general public, so sociolinguistics is often seen in the headlines.
Welsh nationalists covering up English signs along Welsh roads is a real-life example of attitudes and behaviour towards languages and their users. Sociolinguistics became more applicable to the interest of the ordinary person in the 1960s when linguists, focusing in the sociolinguistic field, turned their attention to language variation.Slide41
The Media
The media's promotion of sociolinguistics creates a buzz of interest around the topic
Public take an interest into sociolinguistics
An example of this is an interest in accents used in broadcasting, including the
move from
Received Pronunciation
to a
variety of accents and dialects in television broadcasting
.
Slide42
Real People
Sociolinguistics is now a
recognized
part of 'linguistics' and 'language' modules in most courses at university level
Language is an important means of
establishing
and
maintaining relationships
It provides a way for humans to
subconsciously read their peers
Examining the way in which people use language in different social contexts can begin to explain how language works and the workings of
social relationships in a community. The consideration of spoken communication enables a student of sociolinguistics to discover certain information about the speaker from their language, without direct questioning, this includes sex, approximate age, regional and ethnic origins, level of education and their attitude to the listenerFurther to this, the study of language and identity, an aspect of sociolinguistics, allows the application of sociolinguistics to everyday lifeSlide43
The Sociolinguistic Variable
"It begins with the simple act of noticing a variation - that there are two alternative ways of saying the same thing"
[1]
Labov's
quote here is pretty self-explanatory of what
sociolinguistic variation
is: it is simply different words, sounds and language people use to explain the same thing.
These
variants
(different ways/ '
realisations
' of saying the same thing) can be
lexical (words) or phonetic (sounds of the letters in the word).Slide44
What sociolinguistics are interested in is seeing which variants
are used, and deemed more appropriate for use, in certain social contexts.Slide45
THANK YOU and SEE you NEXT
K.T.KHADER