SOCIOLINGUISTICS

SOCIOLINGUISTICS

What is the relationship between society and language?

The relationship between language and society is one that can vary from culture to culture. Language and society is tightly anchored, and the relationship is also deeply rooted in most cultures and societies. If either one of these is used inappropriately, it can cause great change in perception, or point of view, as well as change the way that conflict is resolved. Language really helps people to grasp social values, which is important to most.

Reference: merlitomarciano.wordpress.com

If we talk about the same language, why do you think it varies from one place to another?

There are about 70 million deaf people who use sign language as their first language or mother tongue. It is also the first language and mother tongue to many hearing people and some deaf blind people (tactile sign languages). Each country has one or sometimes two or more sign languages, although different sign languages can share the same linguistic roots in the same way as spoken languages do.

Besides the place, what other things do you think affects the way we speak?

Understand variations in spoken language, explaining why language changes in relation to contexts

 Evaluate the impact of spoken language choices in your own and others ‘use

Language is a social factor. The languages of developed societies - let's call it Civilization - all distinguish between more and less refined or elevated speech. Whether a speaker is educated will be obvious from his speech, and his economic status, geographical and ethnic background may be deduced.

Politics inevitably infects the language. Most Americans of a certain age struggle not to say some words that were ok a while ago. And it works both ways. Language affects social behavior. For example, we say we ride a bicycle, even though we drive it (our legs are pistons delivering power through the chain to the driving wheel), and so bicyclists in traffic are understood to be harmless, charming eco-champions instead of the worst drivers the world has ever seen. All because the first bicycles had no pedals, and all you could do was ride

Social factors may affect your language, depending on your status in society, for example if you are poor and cannot afford an education or you were raised to believe schooling wasn't important or you grew up in a rural area where proper grammar wasn't encouraged, your way of speaking might be different or not as eloquent as opposed to someone of higher standing.

What is the difference between accent and dialect?

Accent and dialect are two different words that are commonly heard in linguistics. These two words refer to a certain way of speaking a language and are often confused, resulting in being used interchangeably; however both the words have different meanings. Accents are usually considered as a subset of dialects and are gaining popularity due to the increase in international Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) companies. Due to the outsourcing, a lot of people look for people with an American accent to work at such places.

an accent depends mostly on pronunciation of specific words or phrases. An accent is the manner in which different people pronounce words differently from each other. Accents differ depending on a particular individual, location, or nation. The accent can also help identify the locality, region, the socio-economic statues, the ethnicity, caste and/or social class of the speaker. All these factors affect the accent of a person

A dialect is a variation in the language itself and not only in the pronunciation. Dialect is a type of language that is derived from a primary language. For example, Sanskrit being a primary language, Hindi, Marathi and Gujarati are all considered as dialects of that particular language. It is used to refer to the language that deviates from the original language. The second language differs with regards to grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary, etc. In certain cases, a mix of two languages is also considered as a dialect, such as Spanglish is considered as a dialect of Spanish and English.

Covert Prestige

Prestige associated with that choice is gained from within social group identification.

In sociolinguistics, the degree of esteem and social value attached by members of a speech community to certain languages, dialects, or features of a language variety.

Overt prestige: 

Overt prestige: the status of a speech style or feature that is generally recognized as “better” or more positively valued in the larger community, in contrast to covert prestige.

Overt prestige' and 'covert prestige' are terms usually used to refer to dialects. An overt prestige dialect is generally one that is widely recognized as being used by a culturally dominant group. In England, this would be RP. In the US, the Midwestern standard. A covert prestige dialect, on the other hand, is one that is generally perceived by the dominant culture group as being inferior but which compels its speakers to use it to show membership in an exclusive community. In this way, covert prestige can be likened to 'street cred': If you talk street, you may not be accepted by the power majority, but you earn respect among those who reject the values of that power majority.

http://grammar.about.com/od/pq/g/Prestige.htm

Pidgin language (origin in Engl. word `business'?) is nobody's native language; may arise when two speakers of different languages with no common language try to have a makeshift conversation. Lexicon usually comes from one language, structure often from the other. Because of colonialism, slavery etc. the prestige of Pidgin languages is very low. Many pidgins are `contact vernaculars', may only exist for one speech event.

Creole language (orig. person of European descent born and raised in a tropical colony) is a language that was originally a pidgin but has become nativized, i.e. a community of speakers claims it as their first language. Next used to designate the language(s) of people of Caribbean and African descent in colonial and ex-colonial countries (Jamaica, Haiti, Mauritius, Réunion, Hawaii, Pitcairn, etc.)

http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/messeas/handouts/pjcreol/node1.html