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Department of English
Introduction
To
Linguistics
Level Four
Dr. Mohamed Younis
Language, Society and Culture
Sociolinguistics
The term sociolinguistics is used generally for the
study of the relationship between language and
society.
This is a broad area where linguistics interacts with a
number of other academic disciplines such as
anthropology, sociology and social psychology.
Social dialects
Whereas the traditional study of regional dialects
tended to concentrate on the speech of people in rural
areas, the study of social dialects has been mainly
concerned with speakers in towns and cities.
In the social study of dialect, it is social class that is
mainly used to define groups of speakers as having
something in common.
Two main groups are identified :‘middle class’( those
who have more years of education and perform nonmanual work, and ‘working class’, those who have
fewer years of education and perform manual work of
some kind.
When linguists refer to ‘working-class speech’, they
are talking about a social dialect.
The terms ‘upper’ and ‘lower’ are used to further
subdivide the groups, mainly on an economic basis,
making ‘upper-middle-class speech’ another type of
social dialect (or ‘sociolect’).
In the analysis of social dialects certain features of
language use are treated. These features are
pronunciations, words or structures that are regularly
used in one form by working-class speakers and in
another form by middle-class speakers. for example,
In Edinburgh the word home is regularly pronounced
as [he:m], as if rhyming with name, among lowerworking-class speakers, and as [ho:m], as if rhyming
with foam, among lower-middle-class speakers. It’s a
small difference in pronunciation, but it’s an indicator
of social status.
A more familiar example might be the verb ain’t, as in
I ain’t finished yet, which is generally used more often
in working-class speech than in middle-class speech.
Education and Occupation
Although each of us has an individual way of
speaking, a personal dialect or idiolect, we generally
tend to sound like others with whom we share
similar
educational
backgrounds
and/or
occupations.
As adults, the outcome of our time in the
educational system is usually reflected in our
occupation and socio-economic status.
The way bank executives, as opposed to window
cleaners, talk to each other usually provides
linguistic evidence for the significance of these social
variables.
Diglossia
It is linguistic situation involving two distinct varieties
of a language which exists in some countries.
In diglossia, there is a ‘low’ variety, acquired locally
and used for everyday affairs/ daily life situations, and
a ‘high’ or special variety, learned in school and used
for important matters.
A type of diglossia exists in Arabic speaking countries
where the high variety (Classical Arabic/ Standard
Arabic) is used in formal matters such as education
field, in serious political events and in religious
discussions.
The low variety is the local version of the language,
such as Saudi Arabic/ Sudanese or Syrian Arabic.
Language and Culture
The type of sociolinguistic variation described above is
sometimes attributed to cultural differences.
This approach to the study of language originates in the
work of anthropologists who have used language as a
source of information in the general study of ‘culture’.
The term culture to refer to all the ideas and assumptions
about the nature of things and people that we learn when
we become members of social groups.
It can be defined as ‘socially acquired knowledge’. This is
the kind of knowledge that, like our first language, we
initially acquire without conscious awareness.
We develop awareness of our knowledge, and hence of our
culture, only after having developed language.
The End
Good Luck
Bonne Chance
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