Meeting Sociolinguistics language in society What is sociolinguistics

Meeting Sociolinguistics: language in society

What is sociolinguistics? • Sociolinguistics is the study of the relationship between language use and the structure of society. • Sociolinguistics study about all phenomena of using language in a community, whether one language is always used by the speaker or it is no longer exist and there is the extinction of language in one community.

Dialect • In talking about studying a language, it can not be separated from the people who use that language. • Language always relates to the society and community, as well as to the cultures. • In doing that relation, it can be found in a community people tend to use language based on varieties of language, such as the pronunciation of word(s) and the meaning of some words.

• In result, the use of a language can be in form of different dialect and idiolect. • Dialect relates to the variety of language used by community, it is based on region. • Dialect can be divided into two: 1)regional dialect that consist of various aspect from region: 2) sociolect, which is dialect that relates to society include the age, sex, social status of the speakers. While, idiolect relates to the use of language individually or the unique of individual in speaking. So that, it is easy to know people background of language by hearing their dialect.

• Social factors of speak can be based on: 1) to whom you speak (whether parents, friends, superior, or subordinates); 2) where you speak (at school, at church, street); 3) what topic (serious or not); 4) what function you speak (formal or informal).

• Dialect is a part of accent-the characteristics of speech that convey information about the speaker’s dialect, which may reveal in what country or what part of the country the speaker grew up or to which sociolinguistics group the speaker belongs. • The terms accent is also used to refer to the speech of someone who speaks a language nonnatively, for example a French person speaking English is described as having a French accent. • In this sense, accent refers to phonological differences or “interference” from a different language spoken elsewhere.

Lingua Franca • Many areas of the world are populated by people speaking divergent languages. In such areas, where groups desire social or commercial communication, one language is often used by common agreement. Such a language is called a lingua franca. • So, it is a link language which is used to communicate among other different languages. For example, bahasa Indonesia is a lingua franca among Indonesian people from different regions.

• Lingua franca emerge because of people mobile so that they need one means of communication that help them understand different language. • In the past, lingua franca is the result of trade language. English has been called “the lingua franca of the whole world, “French at one time, was “the lingua franca of diplomacy, ” and Latin and Greek were the lingua francas of Christianity in the West and East, respectively for a millennium.

Pidgins and Creoles • A lingua franca is typically a language with a broad base of native speakers, likely to be used and learned by persons whose native language is in the same language family. • When a lingua franca is used by some native languages among other “marginal languages”, it is called as pidgin. The two (or possibly more) groups use their native languages as a basis for a rudimentary language of few lexical items and “straightforward” grammatical rules. • One such pidgin is called Tok Pisin, originally was called Melanesian Pidgin English. It is widely used in Papua New Guinea.

• One distinguishing characteristic of pidgin languages is that no one learns them as native speakers. • When a pidgin comes to be adopted by a community as its native tounge, and children learn it as a first language, that language is called a creole; the pidgin has become creolized. • Creole become fully developed languages, having more lexical items and a broader array of grammatical distinction than pidgins. In time, they become languages as complete in every way as other languages. • For example, Gullah is an English-based creole spoken by the descendants of African slaves on the islands off the coast of Georgia and South Carolina. Louisiana Creole, related to Haitian Creole, is spoken by large numbers of blacks and whites in Louisiana.

Styles and Slang • Most speakers of a language know many “dialects. ” They use one “dialect” when out with friends, another when on a job interview or presenting a report in class, and another when talking to their parents. These “situation dialects” are called styles. • Nearly everybody has at least an informal and a formal style. In an informal style the rules on contraction are used more often, the syntactic rules of negation and agreement may be altered, and many words are used that do not occur in formal style.

• One mark of an informal style is the frequent occurrence of slang. Slang has been defined as “one of those things that everybody can recognize and nobody can define. ” • The use of slang, colloquial language, introduces many new words into the language by recombining old words into new meanings. Spaced out, right on, hangup, and rip-off have all gained a degree of acceptance. • Slang may also introduce an entirely new word, such as barf, flub, and pooped. • Finally, slang often consist of ascribing totally new meanings to old words. Grass and pot widened their meaning to “marijuana”; pig and fuzz are derogatory term for “policeman”; rap, cool, dig, stoned, bread, and split have all extended their semantic domain.