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Welcome to All
Course Code: E 300 A
Course Name
English Language and Literacy
An Introduction To Sociolinguistics
Janet Holmes
Ch1: What Do Sociolinguists Study?
 What is Sociolinguistics?
o The study of language in relation to society.
o Sociolinguistics is a branch of linguistics which
studies all aspects of the relationship b/w language
and society.
o The study of the linguistic variables which require
social factors in their explanation.
 Linguistic variables
o phonological
o morphological
o syntactic
o lexical
 The basic framework of sociolinguistic description
includes:
The social factors:
o participants
o setting,
o topic &
o function
Social dimensions :
o social distance,
o formality,
o status &
o referential & affective functions.
Ch2: Language choice in multilingual communities
 Linguistic repertoire
o the range of languages or varieties of a language
available for use by a speaker, each of which enables
the speaker to perform a particular social role.
o may also be applied collectively to the range of
linguistic varieties within a speech community.
 Domains
o contexts where language is used.
o a group of institutionalized social situations typically
constrained by a common set of behavioral rules.
 Diglossia:
 o a situation where two very different varieties of a
language co-occur throughout a speech community.
 o Each variety has a distinct range of social functions.
 Polyglossia:
 o The coexistence of multiple languages in the same
speech community.
 Speech community
 o Any group within a society that has anything significant
in common (religion, ethnicity, race, age, deafness, sexual
orientation, etc.)
 Code-Switching and Code-Mixing
Code
o any system of communication involving language.
o A code may be a language or a variety / style of a
language
 Code-switching
o Alternation b/w 2 or more languages, dialects, or
language registers in the course of discourse b/w people
who have more than one language in common.
Sometimes the switch lasts only for a few sentences, or
even for a single phrase.
o Speech that draws to differing extents on at least two
languages combined in different ways.
 Code-Mixing
o Involves the transfer of linguistic elements from one
language into another
o Code-mixing emphasizes hybridization, & the term
codeswitching emphasizes movement from one
language to another.
 hybridization is a term to describe the process of
one language variety blending with another variety
 A hybrid word is a word which etymologically has
one part derived from one language and another part
derived from a different language.
 (e.g. A WORD whose elements come from more than one
 language: television (from Greek tele-, Latin vision)
 Types of Code switching
situational code switching
affective code switching
metaphorical code switching
Lexical borrowing
Ch3: Language maintenance and shift
Language Maintenance:
o The extent to which people continue to use a language
once they are part of a community in which another
language has a dominant position.
Language shift:
o Refers to language transfer or language replacement.
o the progressive process whereby a speech community
of a language shifts to speaking another language.
Language Death
o When a speech community ceases to use their original
language
 Language Loss
o A process that affects speech communities where the
level of linguistic competence that speakers possess
of a given language is decreased.
 Ethnolinguistic Vitality
o The vitality of an ethnolinguistic group is "that which
makes a group likely to behave as a distinctive and
active collective entity in intergroup situations.
o Strong ethnolinguistic vitality ensures that the
ethnolinguistic and cultural community will remain a
distinct, active entity, whereas weak ethnolinguistic
vitality is associated with linguistic and cultural
assimilation.
 Language revival:
o To recover the spoken use of a language that is
endangered.
Ch4: Linguistic varieties and multilingual nations
 Vernacular Language
o Unstandardized variety
o Acquired in the home, as a first variety
o Used for limited functions
o A first language of a group socially or politically
dominated by a group with a different language.
o A language which is not an official language in a
particular contexts.
o The most colloquial variety in a person’s linguistic
repertoire.
o The variety used for communication at home and with
close friends.
o The language of solidarity between people from the
same ethnic group.
 o The most informal and colloquial variety of a language
which may be also have a standardized variety
 Standard Variety
o A variety which is written
o Undergone some degree of regularization or codification
o a prestigious variety
o Serves a High variety functions
 Lingua franca:
o Serves as a regular means of communication between
different groups in a multilingual speech community.
 Used for communication between people whose first
languages differ.
 Pidgin:
o A language with no native speakers.
o Develops as a means of communication between
people who do not have a common language.
 Creole
A pidgin which has acquired native speakers.
 Pidgin Vs. Creole
Pidgin
Creole
A language with no native speakers
A pidgin which has
acquired native speakers
Simplified grammatical structure
Linguistically complex
Restricted domains & functions
Can be used for all
functions of any language
Not prestigious
Has a prestigious position
at least by its speakers.
 Ch5: National Languages and Language planning

National vs. official Languages
National language
Lang of a political, cultural & social unit
It is generally developed & used as a
symbol of national unity. Its functions are
to identify nation & unite its people
Official Language
A language which may be used
for government business
Its functions are primarily utilitarian
rather than symbolic
One language may serve both functions
 Language Planning:
A deliberate, systematic and theory –based attempt to
solve the communication problems of a community by
studying its various languages and dialects, and
developing an official language policy concerning their
selection and use.
 Language planning steps:
o Selection
o Codification (standardization)
o Elaboration
o securing its acceptance
 The Linguists role in language planning
o Codification of orthography
o Developing Vocabulary
o Ensuring acceptance (e.g. recommending the use of
certain linguistic forms to be adopted by the media to help
in gaining the public’s familiarity with the official language
and hence their acceptance.)
Ch 6: Regional and Social Dialects
 A regional dialect is a pattern of language use peculiar to
a geographical area and its occupants.
 A social dialect is the dialect that reflects social-class,
origin, formal education, social position, occupation &
economic level .
 Cross-continental variation: Dialect Chain:
A dialect continuum is a range of dialects spoken across
a large geographical area, differing only slightly b/w
areas that are geographically close, & gradually
decreasing in mutual intelligibility as the distances
become greater.
Dialects separated by great geographical distances may
not be mutually comprehensible.
Social Variation
 Accent
Refers to pronunciation only.
Social accent relate to cultural & educational background
of speaker.
 Dialect
Refers to grammar & vocabulary in addition to
pronunciation.
Ch 7: Gender and age
 Gender-preferential features
linguistic features that are preferred & utilized by a certain
gender.
 Gender-exclusive features
linguistic features that occur exclusively in a certain
gender’s speech.
 Gender and social class:
o In Western societies where women’s and men’s social
roles overlap, the speech forms they use also overlap.
o Women tend to use more standard forms than men. Men
use more of the vernacular forms.
 Explanations and research on the claim that women
tend to use standard forms more than men.
Claiming more prestigious social status
Meeting the community’s expectations by modeling
good behavior since they have the role of serving as
models for children’s speech.
Seeking to be valued by the society’s where they are
considered subordinate members.
Men use Vernacular forms as an expression of
machismo. So, women tend to use standard forms as
they are associated with female values & femininity.
Chapter 8: Ethnicity and Social Networks
 Same group often speaks similarly & has similar linguistic
features that indicate a person’s social status, gender, age
& ethnicity.
 Where choice of language is available for communication,
an individual signal ethnicity through specific short
phrases, verbal fillers/ linguistic tags. Greetings, emphatic
phrases, tags & responses are used to signal /emphasize
common ethnicity.
 When an ethnic group adopts the language of the
dominant society, an important symbol of their distinct
ethnicity, their language, often disappears. Ethnic groups
often respond to this situation by using the dominant
language in a way which signals its ethnic identity.
 African Americans are visibly different & has developed a
distinct variety of English known as African American
Vernacular English (AAVE). This dialect has a number of
features which do not occur in standard mainstream
American English. These linguistic features act as symbols
of ethnicity & express a sense of cultural distinctiveness
for African Americans. One of its most observed features
is the complete absence of the copula verb “be” in some
social & linguistic contexts:
AAVE
American SE
She very nice
She’s very nice
He a teacher
He’s a teacher
That my book
That’s my book
Another distinctive grammatical feature of AAVE is the use of
“be” to signal recurring or repeated actions.
AAVE
American SE
She be at school on weekdays
She is always at school..
Multiple negation was identified as a feature of the English of
many lower-socioeconomic groups, which is a feature of AAVE.
There are regional varieties of British Black English. The
function of these varieties is to act as symbols of ethnicity
among British Black people. The term of anti-language is
sometimes used for these varieties to mark their function
as expressing opposition to the mainstream values of
white British society which exclude Black people & their
culture.
 In New Zealand there exists a Maori dialect of English. There
are grammatical features that occur frequently in Maori people’s
speech. Maori women use vernacular past tense forms of
some verbs. The greeting routines exchanged b/w Maori people
in informal contexts are also distinct.
 Social Network :Networks in sociolinguistics refer to the
pattern of informal relationships that people engage in on a
regular basis. 2 technical terms are useful for describing diff
types of networks: density and plexity.
Density refers to the degree of interaction b/w members of the
same network.
Plexity is a measure of the range of diff types of transactions
people are involved in with diff individuals.
 A uniplex relationship is one where the link with the other
person is in only one area. Multiplex relationships involve
interactions with others along several dimensions.
 Penelope Ekhert, an American sociolinguist, uses the term
“community of practice” to capture complexities of what
it means to belong to a social group. Communities of
practice develop around activities which group members
engage in together, & their shared objectives & attitudes.
 Constructions of social identity: People use language to
construct diff identities, in diff social interactions & to
indicate diff affiliations & values. Thus they “perform”
particular aspects of their social identities in specific
situations. Individuals use linguistic resources in dynamic
& constructive ways to express various social identitiesidentities which draw on macro-level social categories like
class & gender, as well as micro-level categories like gang
members, or feisty friend, or youngest child in family.
Chapter 9: Language Change
 Languages change occurs over time in areas of spellings,
sound & meaning. Speakers & writers change the way
they use language.
 Variation & change
Language varies in 3 major ways which are interrelated:
over time, in physical space & socially.
Language change - or variation over time - has its origins
in spatial (or regional) & social variation.
All lang change has its origins in variation. Possibility of
linguistic change exists as a new form develops & begins
to be used alongside an existing form. If new form
spreads, change is in progress. If it eventually displaces
old form, change has become a ‘fait accompli’ – it has
gone to completion.
 Speaker innovation: Speaker’s innovate, sometimes
spontaneously, but more often by imitating speakers from
other communities. If their innovations are adopted by
others & diffuse through their local community & beyond
into other communities then linguistic change results.
 Changes from above: Changes in lang which people are
aware of is described as ‘changes from above.’ In these
changes people are conscious of their social significance
as desirable or prestige features of speech. People
evaluate speech of those who use such features highly.
Another meaning of ‘change from above’ refers to source
of change where ‘above’ refers to the fact that a feature is
generally spreading downwards through social groups in a
speech community.
 Change from below: Changes in pronunciation are of
vowels are often changes from below, in that they are
changes below people’s level of conscious awareness.
This is a diff meaning of change from below from a change
which spreads from a lower social groups upwards
through to higher social groups. Such changes may / may
not be above the level of conscious awareness. People
may adopt new speech features, & especially slang, from
lower social groups relatively consciously.
 Wave theory: Linguists use wave metaphor to explain
how linguistic changes spread through a community. Any
change spreads simultaneously in diff directions, though
not necessarily at the same rate in all directions. Social
factors like age, status, gender & region affect rates of
change & directions in which waves roll more swiftly. Wave
metaphor is a useful way of visualising the spread of a
change from one group to another.
 Lexical diffusion: Sound changes not only spread from
one person to another & from one style to another style,
they also spread from one word to another. Sound
changes spread through diff words one by one is called
lexical diffusion.
 Comparing speech of people from diff age groups is a
useful clue to language change, known as apparent-time
method of studying change. This method is a useful shortcut for sociolinguists who cannot wait for long time to see
what happens in real time.
Chapter 10: Style, Context and Register
 Language varies according to uses & users. The
addressees and context affects our choice of code or
variety, whether language, dialect or style.
 People vary their language styles to reflect their group
membership. These features are sometimes described as
stylistic features. Distinctive styles or registers may be
shaped by the functional demands of particular situations
or occupations.
 Addressee is a major influence on the speaker’s style.
People vary their language in relation to person they are
addressing & to whether they want to coverage / diverge in
their speech to him / her.
 People talk differently to children & to adults. Some adjust
their speech style or “accommodate” more than others.
 The perceived social background of the addressee
influences the linguistic features used by the speaker.
 Audience design: the influence of addressee/audience on
a speaker’s style.
 The accommodation theory :
Speech convergence: when people talk to each other their
speech becomes more similar. Participants converge to
each other’s speech in speech accommodation as a
polite speech strategy, using the same pronunciation &
vocabulary to signal that they are on same understanding.
Speech divergence : People who aspire to a higher social
status diverge upwards from speech of those from same
social class. This does not always indicate a speaker’s
negative attitudes towards addressees. Where divergent
forms are admired, divergence is used to benefit the
diverger.
 Referee design: Speakers may deliberately diverge both
from their own usual speech style & from that of their
addressee(s) towards the style of a 3rd party for special
effect. This is called referee design – the 3rd party is
‘referred to’ although they are not present.
 Observer’s paradox: Trying to capture on tape the way a
person speaks when they are not being observed.
 Hypercorrection usage goes beyond the norm. It involves
extending a form beyond the standard. Hypercorrect
behavior results from insecurity & attempts to act in a
perceived correct way to please.
 Register: is the kind of jargon which a group of specialists
often develop to talk about their specialty, an occupational
style that uses specific vocabulary.
Ch 11: Speech
Functions, Politeness & Cross-Cultural
Communication
Language is used differently in formal & casual contexts.
The purpose of talk will also affect its form.
The concept of politeness: the social dimensions determine
what is considered polite in diff situations & communities.
Being linguistically polite is often a matter of selecting
linguistic forms which express appropriate degree of social
distance or which recognize relevant status of power diff.
Clearly rules for polite behaviour differ from one speech
community to another. Linguistic politeness is culturally
determined. Eg: appropriate language on gratitude,
appropriate greeting, etc.
 Language serves an affective / social function & a
referential / informative function. There are a number of
ways of categorizing the functions of speech:
 Expressive utterances express the speaker’s feelings.
Eg: I’m feeling great today.
 Directive utterances attempt to get someone to do
something. Eg: Clear the table.
 Referential utterances provide information.
Eg: At the third stroke it will be 3 o’clock precisely.
 Metalinguistic utterances comment on language itself.
Eg: ‘Hegemony’ is not a common word.
 Poetic utterances focus on aesthetic features of
language. Eg: a poem, a rhythm, etc.
 Phatic utterances express solidarity and empathy with
others.
Eg: Hi, how are you, lovely day isn’t it !
 Phatic communication conveys an affective or social
message rather than a referential one. Language is not
simply used to convey referential information, but also
expresses information about social relationships.
 We need to understand the social values of a society in
order to speak politely. There are 2 ways of perceiving
politeness:
a- Positive politeness is solidarity oriented. It
emphasizes shared attitudes & values & minimizes status
diff.
b- Negative politeness includes the use of polite forms
that involves expressing oneself appropriately in terms of
social distance & respecting status diff.

 Cross - cultural communication: Cross-cultural
communication problem arises when anyone who has
travelled outside their own speech community is likely to
have had some experience of miscommunication based
on cultural differences. The potential areas of
misunderstanding are even greater when we venture into
new cultures.
Chapter 12: Gender, Politeness and Stereotypes
 Some social dialectologists suggested that women are
status conscious & that they use standard speech forms to
reflect this aspect.
 Lakoff, an American linguist, argued that women use the
type of language that reinforce their subordinate status.
 Features of women’s language
1- Lexical hedges or fillers, e.g. you know, sort of, you
see, well…
2- Tag questions, e.g. she’s very nice, isn’t she?
3- Rising intonation on declaratives, e.g. it is really good
4- Empty adjectives, e.g. divine, cute, charming.
5- Precise colour terms, e.g. magneta, aquamarine.
6- Intensifiers like so, just e.g. he is so cute. It is just
right.
78-
Hypercorrect grammar forms.
Super polite forms, e.g. “I’m sorry to bother you and I
hope I’m not too much trouble but could you move
your foot a little either way because somehow mine
seems to have got caught under yours”
9- Emphatic stress, e.g. It was a BRILLIANT
performance.
 Lackoff identified a number of linguistic features which
were unified by their function of expressing “lack of
confidence”.
ALinguistic devices which are used for hedging, or
reducing the force of an utterance.
BLinguistic features which may boost or intensify a
proposition’s force.
 Women boost the force of their utterance b’coz they think
that otherwise they will not be paid attention to. So, acc to
Lackoff, both hedges & boosters reflect women’s lack of
confidence.
 Tags may be used as confrontational & coercive devices
to force feedback from an uncooperative addressee.
Women used more tags than men but they did not use
them for the same purpose as men.
 Analyses reveal women as facilitative & supportive
conversationalists. Men dominate the talking time with
interrupting behaviour & conversational feedback.
 Gossip: the kind of relaxed in-group talk that goes on b/w
people in informal contexts. In Western society, gossip is
defined as ‘idle talk’ & considered as characteristic of
women’s interaction. Its function for women is to affirm
solidarity & maintain social relationship b/w women.
 Construction of gender identity:
Approaching gender identity as a construction, rather than
as a fixed category is useful when accounting for
examples where women adapt to “masculine” contexts, &
men adapt to “feminine” contexts.
 Narratives are means of constructing particular gender
identities. Approaching the construction of gender as a
process, rather than as a given category, leads to a view
on individuals as constantly doing gender. This approach
encourages a view that every linguistic & non linguistic
choice is meaningful.
 Sexist Language :The study of a sexist language is
concerned with the way language expresses both negative
& positive stereotypes of both men & women.
 Generic structures/forms provide evidence to support
the claim that English language marginalises women
& treats them as abnormal. Words like ‘generic’ he &
man make women invisible.
Chapter 13: Language, Cognition And Culture
 Sociolinguists who adopt a social constructionist
approach argue that language not only reflects and
expresses membership of social categories, it also
contributes to the construction of the social identity. We
choose to portray ourselves according to the linguistic
features we use.
 Deborah Cameron uses the term verbal hygiene to
describe how people attempt to use language precisely &
appropriately in diff situations & registers. Language
reflects society’s perceptions of particular groups through
labeling that has positive & negative connotations.
 Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis:
Studies suggest that there is a close relationship b/w
language & perception. Whorf & Sapir suggested that
particular words selected to describe or label objects often
influence people’s perception & behavior. The strong
interpretation of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is generally
labeled linguistic determinism. This holds that people
from diff cultures think diff b’coz of diff in their languages.
 Linguistic relativity: holds that language influences
perceptions, thought & behaviour.
 Grammaticalisation: Certain concepts are more codable
or easier to express in some languages than in others.
The areas of experience which are imp to cultures tend to
get grammaticalised in their language. Something is said
to be grammaticalised / grammaticised when it functions
less & less like an independent lexical item, & more &
more like an element in the grammatical system, like an
affix or an auxiliary verb.
 Language provides a means of encoding a community’s
knowledge, beliefs & values, ie; its culture.
 Kinship shows the complexities of relationship b/w lang &
culture. The importance of extended family or whanau as
an imp social unit is reflected in kinship system. Kinship
labels reflect mutual rights & obligations of diff members
towards each other. Kinship systems encode distinctions
based on genealogy & biology.
 Basil Bernstein studied possible cognitive implications
where groups use diff varieties of a lang. He tested lang
of working class children showing them a series of events
in photos & asked to describe what they saw. The
children used short, monosyllabic responses. In the
interview, this performance was viewed as “restricted” in
terms of the linguistic resources.
 Bernstein suggest that a “restricted code” might constrain
the cognitive abilities of those who use it. In other words,
he was extending the principle of linguistic determinism.
He argued that the language children use might affect
what they were capable of perceiving and even their
thinking abilities.
Chapter 14: Analysing Discourse
 Pragmatics: is concerned with analysis of meaning in
interaction.
 Paul Grice, a British philosopher, proposed pragmatic
rules / conversational maxims to account for our basic
assumptions about interaction. He formulated 4 maxims of
co-operative talk : Quantity, Quality, Relation & Manner.
 Robin Lakoff, the American pragmatics researcher, known
as ‘the mother of modern politeness theory’, introduced 3
rules of politeness: Don’t impose, Give options, Be friendly
The 1st two rules express notion of negative politeness &
last one relates to the concept of positive politeness.
 Conversational implicature is inferring more than what is
literally said.
 Ethnography of speaking an approach to analyse
language which has been designed to heighten awareness
of culture-bound assumptions. It is also known as
ethnography of communication since it embraces
features of non-verbal communication too.
 Interactional Sociolinguistics : an approach to analyse
discourse which is associated with John Gumperz. This
approach pays attention to the clues people use to
interpret conversational interaction within its ethnographic
context.
 Contextualisation cues: features by which speakers
signal & listeners interpret what the activity is, how
semantic content is to be understood & how each
sentence relates to what precedes or follows.
 Conversation Analysis (CA): has its roots in sociology &
sociologists argue its value in demonstrating that talk is
action.CA researchers approach communication as a
jointly organised activity like dancing or a cooperative
musical.
 Many interactions involve adjacency pairs, ie; related
utterances produced by 2 successive speakers in such a
way that the 2nd utterance is identified as a follow-up to the
1st.
 Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) : is explicitly
concerned with investigating how lang is used to construct
& maintain power relationships in society; the aim is to
show up connections b/w lang & power & b/w lang &
ideology.
Chapter 15: Attitudes and Applications
 Language Attitudes: Attitudes to language reflect
attitudes to users & uses of language, and are strongly
influenced by social & political factors.
 Overt and covert prestige :
The standard variety in a community has overt prestige.
Covert prestige refers to positive attitudes towards
vernacular or non-standard speech varieties. The local
accent is the only possible way of speaking to friends,
work mates and family. It expresses group identity and
solidarity.
Overtly negative attitudes to non-standard varieties of
English, e.g. Patois and Creole reflect the depressed
social position of the West Indian people in Britain rather
than features of the language itself.
 Matched guise technique: The inability of listeners to
distinguish b/w the same speakers using diff accents,
while hearing them on the tape.
 Ebonics: this term was coined in 1970s but was revived &
popularised in 1990s; labelled as African American
Vernacular English (AAVE).
 Attitude methodology: 3 main ways by which people
collect information on attitudes to lang: Direct observation,
Direct questions & Indirect measures.
 Vernacular dialects & Educational disadvantage:
Linguists claims that children who use vernacular forms
are linguistically deprived or deficient.
Chapter 16: Conclusion
 Acc to Chomsky, linguistic competence is the knowledge
of lang of ‘the ideal speaker-hearer in a completely
homogeneous speech community.’
 The knowledge which underlies people’s ability to use
language appropriately is known as sociolinguistic
competence. It includes knowing when to speak & when
to be silent. It also involves knowing how to use lang for
diff functions, like getting things done in diff contexts.
 Socio-pragmatic competence: Interpreting social
meaning conveyed by talk-in-interaction & encoding social
meaning appropriately in diff contexts.
 Dimensions of sociolinguistic analysis:
(a) social distance / solidarity
(b) status / power
(c) formality
(d) function- affective & referential
 Sociolinguistic universals: The generalisations made by
sociolinguists in their attempt to identify & explain common
trends in the ways social factors account for linguistic
variation in diff speech communities are as follows:
(a) All speech communities have linguistic means of distinguishing diff
social relationships; here solidarity & status are relevant dimensions
of analysis.
(b) All speech communities have linguistic means of distinguishing diff
contextual styles; formality is here the relevant dimension of analysis.
(c) All speech communities have linguistic means of expressing basic
speech functions: potential universals here are referential & affective
functions, or at a greater level of specificity.
(d) In all speech communities language change implies language
variation, with social variation an important contributing component.
Dr. Veena Vijaya
E-mail: [email protected]
Thank You