Sociolinguistics Study

CAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

A.    Background of Study

Sociolinguistics is the study of how language serves and is shaped by the social nature of human beings. In its broadest conception, sociolinguistics analyzes the many and diverse ways in which language and society entwine. This vast field of inquiry requires and combines insights from a number of disciplines, including linguistics, sociology, psychology and anthropology.

Sociolinguistics examines the interplay of language and society, with language as the starting point. Variation is the key concept, applied to language itself and to its use. The basic premise of sociolinguistics is that language is variable and changing.  As a result, language is not homogeneous — not for the individual user and not within or among groups of speakers who use the same language.

CAPTER II

DISCUSSION

A.     General overview

There are numerous definitions of sociolinguistics. However, each of these definitions does not fail to acknowledge that sociolinguistics has to do with language use and a society’s response to it. Let us examine them.

1.      The study of the relationship between language and society, of language variation, and of attitudes about language.

2.      A branch of anthropological linguistics that studies how language and culture are related, and how language is used in different social contexts.

3.      A study of the relationship between language and social factors such as class, ethnicity, age and sex.

4.      The study of language in social contexts.

5.      The study of the sociological factors involved in the use of language, including gender, race, class, etc.

6.      The study of stylistic and social variation of language (vernacular).

7.      The study of language in relation to its socio-cultural context.

8.      Sociolinguistics is the study of the effect of any and all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context on the way language is used.

9.      The study of social and cultural effects on language.

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CHAPTER III

CLOSING

A.    Conclusion

Sociolinguistics is the descriptive study of the effect of any and all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on the way language is used, and the effects of language use on society. Sociolinguistics differs from sociology of language in that the focus of sociolinguistics is the effect of the society on the language, while the latter's focus is on the language's effect on the society. Sociolinguistics overlaps to a considerable degree with pragmatics. It is historically closely related to linguistic anthropology and the distinction between the two fields has even been questioned recently.

It also studies how language varieties differ between groups separated by certain social variables, e.g., ethnicity, religion, status, gender, level of education, age, etc., and how creation and adherence to these rules is used to categorize individuals in social or socioeconomic classes. As the usage of a language varies from place to place, language usage also varies among social classes, and it is these sociolects that sociolinguistics studies.

The social aspects of language were in the modern sense first studied by Indian and Japanese linguists in the 1930s, and also by Gauchat in Switzerland in the early 1900s, but none received much attention in the West until much later. The study of the social motivation of language change, on the other hand, has its foundation in the wave model of the late 19th century. The first attested use of the term sociolinguistics was by Thomas Callan Hodson in the title of a 1939 paper. Sociolinguistics in the West first appeared in the 1960s and was pioneered by linguists such as William Labov in the US and Basil Bernstein in the UK.

DAFTAR PUSTAKA

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociolinguistics

http://logos.uoregon.edu/explore/socioling/

Marcyliena Morgan, "Speech Community." A Companion to Linguistic Anthropology, ed. by A.

Fromkin, Victoria and Robert Rodman. 1983. An Introduction to Language (third edition). New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

Zdenek Salzmann, Language, Culture, and Society: An Introduction to Linguistic Anthropology. Westview, 2004.




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