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Sociolinguistics is the descriptive study of the effect of any or all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on language and the ways it is used. It can overlap with the sociology of language, which focuses on the effect of language on society. Sociolinguistics overlaps considerably with pragmatics and is closely related to linguistic anthropology.
In linguistics, code-switching or language alternation occurs when a speaker alternates between two or more languages, or language varieties, in the context of a single conversation or situation. Code-switching is different from plurilingualism in that plurilingualism refers to the ability of an individual to use multiple languages, while code-switching is the act of using multiple languages together. Multilinguals sometimes use elements of multiple languages when conversing with each other. Thus, code-switching is the use of more than one linguistic variety in a manner consistent with the syntax and phonology of each variety. Code-switching may happen between sentences, sentence fragments, words, or individual morphemes. However, some linguists consider the borrowing of words or morphemes from another language to be different from other types of code-switching. Likewise, code-switching can occur when there is a change in the environment one is speaking. Code-switching can happen in the context of speaking a different language or switching the verbiage to match that of the audience. There are many ways in which code-switching is employed, such as when speakers are unable to express themselves adequately in a single language or to signal an attitude towards something. Several theories have been developed to explain the reasoning behind code-switching from sociological and linguistic perspectives.
Anthropological linguistics is the subfield of linguistics and anthropology which deals with the place of language in its wider social and cultural context, and its role in making and maintaining cultural practices and societal structures. While many linguists believe that a true field of anthropological linguistics is nonexistent, preferring the term linguistic anthropology to cover this subfield, many others regard the two as interchangeable.
In sociolinguistics, a sociolect is a form of language or a set of lexical items used by a socioeconomic class, profession, age group, or other social group.
Second-language acquisition (SLA), sometimes called second-language learning—otherwise referred to as L2acquisition, is the process by which people learn a second language. Second-language acquisition is also the scientific discipline devoted to studying that process. The field of second-language acquisition is regarded by some but not everybody as a sub-discipline of applied linguistics but also receives research attention from a variety of other disciplines, such as psychology and education.
Peter Trudgill, TBA is an English sociolinguist, academic and author.
A speech community is a group of people who share a set of linguistic norms and expectations regarding the use of language. It is a concept mostly associated with sociolinguistics and anthropological linguistics.
Language contact occurs when speakers of two or more languages or varieties interact with and influence each other. The study of language contact is called contact linguistics. Language contact can occur at language borders, between adstratum languages, or as the result of migration, with an intrusive language acting as either a superstratum or a substratum.
In sociolinguistics, prestige is the level of regard normally accorded a specific language or dialect within a speech community, relative to other languages or dialects. Prestige varieties are language or dialect families which are generally considered by a society to be the most "correct" or otherwise superior. In many cases, they are the standard form of the language, though there are exceptions, particularly in situations of covert prestige. In addition to dialects and languages, prestige is also applied to smaller linguistic features, such as the pronunciation or usage of words or grammatical constructs, which may not be distinctive enough to constitute a separate dialect. The concept of prestige provides one explanation for the phenomenon of variation in form among speakers of a language or languages.
In sociolinguistics, language planning is a deliberate effort to influence the function, structure or acquisition of languages or language varieties within a speech community. Robert L. Cooper (1989) defines language planning as "the activity of preparing a normative orthography, grammar, and dictionary for the guidance of writers and speakers in a non-homogeneous speech community". Along with language ideology and language practices, language planning is part of language policy – a typology drawn from Bernard Spolsky's theory of language policy. According to Spolsky, language management is a more precise term than language planning. Language management is defined as "the explicit and observable effort by someone or some group that has or claims authority over the participants in the domain to modify their practices or beliefs" Language planning is often associated with government planning, but is also used by a variety of non-governmental organizations such as grass-roots organizations as well as individuals. Goals of such planning vary. Better communication through assimilation of a single dominant language can bring economic benefits to minorities but is also perceived to facilitate their political domination. It involves the establishment of language regulators, such as formal or informal agencies, committees, societies or academies to design or develop new structures to meet contemporary needs.
An ethnolect is generally defined as a language variety that marks speakers as members of ethnic groups who originally used another language or distinctive variety. According to another definition, an ethnolect is any speech variety associated with a specific ethnic group. It may be a distinguishing mark of social identity, both within the group and for outsiders. The term combines the concepts of an ethnic group and dialect.
Code-mixing is the mixing of two or more languages or language varieties in speech.
Language ideology is, within anthropology, sociolinguistics, and cross-cultural studies, any set of beliefs about languages as they are used in their social worlds. Language ideologies are conceptualizations about languages, speakers, and discursive practices. Like other kinds of ideologies, language ideologies are influenced by political and moral interests, and they are shaped in a cultural setting. When recognized and explored, language ideologies expose how the speakers' linguistic beliefs are linked to the broader social and cultural systems to which they belong, illustrating how the systems beget such beliefs. By doing so, language ideologies link implicit and explicit assumptions about a language or language in general to their social experience as well as their political and economic interests.
World Englishes is a term for emerging localised or indigenised varieties of English, especially varieties that have developed in territories influenced by the United Kingdom or the United States. The study of World Englishes consists of identifying varieties of English used in diverse sociolinguistic contexts globally and analyzing how sociolinguistic histories, multicultural backgrounds and contexts of function influence the use of English in different regions of the world.
Shana Poplack, is a Distinguished University Professor in the linguistics department of the University of Ottawa and three time holder of the Canada Research Chair in Linguistics. She is a leading proponent of variation theory, the approach to language science pioneered by William Labov. She has extended the methodology and theory of this field into bilingual speech patterns, the prescription-praxis dialectic in the co-evolution of standard and non-standard languages, and the comparative reconstruction of ancestral speech varieties, including African American vernacular English. She founded and directs the University of Ottawa Sociolinguistics Laboratory.
The Competition Model is a psycholinguistic theory of language acquisition and sentence processing, developed by Elizabeth Bates and Brian MacWhinney (1982). The claim in MacWhinney, Bates, and Kliegl (1984) is that "the forms of natural languages are created, governed, constrained, acquired, and used in the service of communicative functions." Furthermore, the model holds that processing is based on an online competition between these communicative functions or motives. The model focuses on competition during sentence processing, crosslinguistic competition in bilingualism, and the role of competition in language acquisition. It is an emergentist theory of language acquisition and processing, serving as an alternative to strict innatist and empiricist theories. According to the Competition Model, patterns in language arise from Darwinian competition and selection on a variety of time/process scales including phylogenetic, ontogenetic, social diffusion, and synchronic scales.
Ghanaian Pidgin English (GhaPE) is a Ghanaian English-lexifier pidgin also known as Pidgin, Broken English, and Kru English. GhaPE is a regional variety of West African Pidgin English spoken in Ghana, predominantly in the southern capital, Accra, and surrounding towns. It is confined to a smaller section of society than other West African creoles, and is more stigmatized, perhaps due to the importance of Twi, an Akan dialect, often spoken as lingua franca. Other languages spoken as lingua franca in Ghana are Standard Ghanaian English (SGE) and Akan. GhaPE cannot be considered a creole as it has no L1 speakers.
Cognitive sociolinguistics is an emerging field of linguistics that aims to account for linguistic variation in social settings with a cognitive explanatory framework. The goal of cognitive sociolinguists is to build a mental model of society, individuals, institutions and their relations to one another. Cognitive sociolinguists also strive to combine theories and methods used in cognitive linguistics and sociolinguistics to provide a more productive framework for future research on language variation. This burgeoning field concerning social implications on cognitive linguistics has yet received universal recognition.
Edgar W. Schneider is a German linguist of Austrian origin. He is emeritus professor of English linguistics at the University of Regensburg, Germany, where he held the chair of English linguistics from 1993 to 2020. From 2021 to 2023 he was a visiting senior fellow at the National University of Singapore for one semester each year. He is known in World Englishes research mainly as the originator of the Dynamic Model of the evolution of Postcolonial Englishes.
Language attitudes refer to an individual's evaluative reactions or opinions toward languages and the speakers of those languages. These attitudes can be positive, negative, or neutral, and they play a crucial role in shaping language use, communication patterns, and interactions within a society. Language attitudes are extensively studied in several areas such as social psychology, sociolinguistics or education It has long been considered to be a triad of cognitive, affective, and behavioral components. Language attitudes play an important role in language learning, identity construction, language maintenance, language planning and policy, among other facets of language development. These attitudes are dynamic and multifaceted, shaping our perceptions, interactions, and societal structures.
References
- ↑ Weston, Daniel (26 October 2011). "Gibraltar's position in the Dynamic Model of Postcolonial English". English World-Wide. A Journal of Varieties of English. 32 (3): 338–367. doi:10.1075/eww.32.3.04wes.
- ↑ Hansen, Beke (2018). Corpus linguistics and sociolinguistics: a study of variation and change in the modal systems of world Englishes. Leiden ; Boston: Brill Rodopi. ISBN 9789004381520.
- ↑ Kirkpatrick, Andy (2007). World Englishes: implications for international communication and English language teaching. Cambridge UP. Chapter 3.
- 1 2 Schneider, Edgar (2007). Postcolonial English: Varieties around the world. Cambridge UP. Chapter 3.