Introduction to Sociolinguistics

Lecture 1&2

Resource Person: Faiza Liaqat

The University of Lahore, Lahore
Sociolinguistics: a study of the relationship between language and society.

Society: a society is any group of people who are drawn together for a certain
purpose or purposes.

Language: a language is what the members of a particular society speak.

Language is a purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas,

emotions, and desires by means of a system of voluntarily produced symbols.
These symbols are, in the first instance, auditory and they are produced by the so-
called ‘organs of speech’. (Sapir 1921)
 Sociolinguistics
A term used to describe all areas of the study of relationship between language and society.
Sociolinguistic is a work which is intended to achieve a better understanding of the nature of human language
by studying language in its social context or to achieve the better understanding of the nature of the relationship
and interaction between language and society.
Relationship between language and society
(a historical overview)
The history of linguistics it is rare to find investigations of any language which are entirely cut off from
concurrent investigations of the history of that language, or of its regional and/or social distributions, or of its
relationship to objects, ideas, events, and actual speakers and listeners.
 Key phases in linguistic study

c.500 bc: Panini and his followers

1786: Sir William Jones
Early twentieth century: ‘Structuralists’ like Ferdinand de Saussure in Europe
1957: Theory of Generative linguistics by Noam Chomsky (asocial approach)
Knowledge of the System (Grammar) of Language
Linguists do not find it at all easy to write grammars because the knowledge that people have of the
languages they speak is extremely hard to describe.
It is knowledge of rules and principles and of the ways of saying and doing things with sounds, words,
and sentences, rather than just knowledge of specific sounds, words, and sentences.
Linguistic Competence
Linguistic theory is concerned primarily with an ideal speaker-listener, in a completely homogeneous speech-community,
who knows its (the speech community‘s) language perfectly and is unaffected by such grammatically irrelevant conditions as
memory limitations, distractions, shifts of attention and interest, and errors (random or characteristic) in applying his
knowledge of the language in actual performance.(Chomsky, 1965, p. 3)

Communicative Competence
“the socially appropriate use of language.” (Paulson, 1992, p. xiv)
“Communicative competence involves knowing not only the language code but also what to say to whom, and how to say it
appropriately in any given situation. It deals with the social and cultural knowledge speakers are presumed to have to enable
them to use and interpret linguistic forms..”
“…Communicative competence extends to both knowledge and expectation of who may or may not speak in certain settings,
when to speak and when to remain silent, whom one may speak to, how one may speak to persons of different statuses and
roles, what appropriate nonverbal behaviors are in various contexts, what the routines for turn-taking are in conversation,
how to ask for and give information, how to request, how to offer or decline assistance or cooperation, how to give
commands, how to enforce discipline, and the like - in short, everything involving the use of language and other
communication dimensions in particular social settings.”
(Saville-Troike, 1989, p. 21
Communicative Competence (Hymes 1974)
A language is not just some kind of abstract object of study. It is also something that people use.

Chomsky’s example, many linguists have argued that we should not study a language in use, or
even how the language is learned, without first acquiring an adequate knowledge of what language
itself is. (Theoretical linguistics)

Many sociolinguists have disagreed, arguing that an asocial linguistics is scarcely worthwhile and
that meaningful insights into language can be gained only if such matters as use and variation are
included as part of the data which must be explained in a comprehensive theory of language.
(Sociolinguistics)
Speech Communities
A set of people with a common language, or who share a repertoire of varieties (accents, styles, even
languages in multilingualism); people who live together and interact through language; people with shared
social attributes (young people, lawyers, women); people in the same social system. The term is most
relevant to small, well-defined, stable communities.
J J Gumperz,‗The Speech Community‘ (1968), repr. in P P Giglio, ed., Language and Social Context
(London, 1972), 219–31
Group of people who share some identifiable aspect of their linguistic communication
More importantly: there should be some self identification as a community … and there may be some
degree of deliberate exclusion of outsiders.
Speech communities can be defined by geography, ethnicity, socio-economic class, but also occupation,
gender, religion, etc.
It follows that individuals can identify with multiple speech communities …… and can adjust their
language according to the circumstances, so as to identify in the most appropriate way
Sociolinguistics and Sociology of Language
There is a distinction between sociolinguistics or micro-sociolinguistics and the sociology of language or macro-
sociolinguistics.

Sociolinguistics is ‘the study of language in relation to society,’ whereas the sociology of language is ‘the study of
society in relation to language.’ (Hudson 1996)

Coulmas (1997, p. 2) says that ‘micro-sociolinguistics investigates how social structure influences the way people
talk and how language varieties and patterns of use correlate with social attributes such as class, sex, and age.

Macro-sociolinguistics, on the other hand, studies what societies do with their languages, that is, attitudes and
attachments that account for the functional distribution of speech forms in society, language shift, maintenance,
and replacement, the delimitation and interaction of speech communities.’
 Sociolinguistic definitions and theoretical statements
Statement: "Sociolinguistic variation is not just a reflection of social factors but an active process through which
individuals negotiate their identities.“
Definition: "Indexicality in sociolinguistics refers to the way linguistic features or choices are used by speakers to signal
certain social meanings, such as group membership or identity.“
Statement: "The concept of 'linguistic landscape' extends our understanding of sociolinguistics
beyond spoken and written language to include the semiotic environment in which language is
used.“
Definition: "Code-switching is a complex sociolinguistic phenomenon where speakers
alternate between two or more languages or dialects within a single conversation, often
influenced by social context and identity.“
Statement: "The study of language attitudes and ideologies reveals how linguistic prejudices
shape social hierarchies and contribute to the maintenance of power structures.“

Definition: "Language shift refers to the gradual or rapid replacement of one language by
another within a community, often as a result of social, economic, or political pressures."
Statement: "Sociolinguistics has moved beyond the binary view of 'standard' and 'non-
standard' varieties to embrace a more fluid understanding of linguistic variation.“

Definition: "The concept of linguistic repertoire recognizes that individuals draw upon a
range of linguistic resources in their interactions, depending on the communicative
context and social dynamics.“
Statement: "The intersectionality of social identities, such as race, gender, and class,
plays a crucial role in shaping linguistic behavior and language variation.“

Definition: "Sociolinguistic ethnography involves immersive, long-term fieldwork within a

specific community to understand how language functions as a social practice."