INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTIC

“SOCIOLINGUISTICS”

How to Different Social Group Use Language

Subject Guided : Aulia Hanifah Qomar, M.Pd.

ARRANGED BY :

THE EIGHT GROUP

1. DEWI MUFIDAH 13106907

2. FENI WAHYUNINGSIH 1066837

3. KHOLILU ROHMAN 1292317

4. NURUL KHOTIMAH 13107987

STATE ISLAMIC COLLAGE OF

(STAIN) JURAI SIWO METRO

2014

PREFACE

First at all, give thanks for God’s love and grace for us. Thanks to God for

helping us and give us chance to finish this assignment timely. And we would like

to say thank you to Mrs. Aulia Hanifah Qomar, M.Pd.as the lecturer that always

teaches us and give much knowledge about how to practice English well. This

assignment is the one of English task that composed of Sociolinguistic.

We realized this assignment is not perfect. But we hope it can be useful for

us. Critics and suggestion is needed here to make this assignment be better.

Hopefully, we as a student in STAIN JURAI SIWO METRO can work more

professional by using English as the second language whatever we done. Thank

you.

Metro, November 18th 2014

Author,

TABLE OF CONTENTS

COVER ....................................................................................................... i

PREFACE ....................................................................................................... ii

TABLE OF CONTENTS ............................................................................... iii

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION ................................................................... 1

A. Background ........................................................................................... 1

CHAPTER II DISCUSSION ......................................................................... 3

A. Sociolinguistic ....................................................................................... 3

B. Language and Dialect .......................................................................... 4

C. Regional Dialect ................................................................................... 5

D. Social Dialect ........................................................................................ 6

E. Style, Register and Belief ...................................................................... 7

CHAPTER III CONCLUSION ..................................................................... 8

A. Conclusion ........................................................................ 8

REFERENCES . ............................................................................................. 9

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

A. Problem Background

When two people speak with one another, there is always more going

on than just conveying a message. The language used by the participants is

always influenced by a number of social factors which define the relationship

between the participants. Consider, for example, a professor making a simple

request of a student to close a classroom door to shut off the noise from the

corridor. There are a number of ways this request can be made:

a. Politely, in a moderate tone “Could you please close the door?”

b. In a confused manner while shaking his/her head “Why aren’t you shutting

the door?”

c. Shouting and pointing, “SHUT THE DOOR!”

The most appropriate utterance for the situation would be a. The most

inappropriate would be c. This statement humiliates the student, and provides

no effort by the professor to respect him/her. Utterance b is awkward because

it implies that the teacher automatically assumes that the student should know

better than to leave the door open when there is noise in the hallway. The

inappropriateness is a social decision tied to the social factors which shape

the relationship between speaker ( the professor), and the listener (the

student).

When choosing an appropriate utterance for the situation, there are

factors that you must consider in order to effectively convey the message to

the other participant.

1. Participants- how well do they know each other?

2. Social setting- formal or informal.

3. Who is talking- status relationship/social roles ( student vs. professor)

4. Aim or purpose of conversation.

5. Topic

Do you notice that there is a difference in the way you speak to your

friends and the way you speak to your relatives, teachers, or others of

professional status? When telling your friend that you like his/her shirt, you

say: “Hey, cool shirt, I like that!”. When telling the President of the company

your parents work for that you like his/her shirt, you say: “You look very nice

today, I really like that shirt.” This is called choosing your variety or code.

This can also be seen on a larger scale, diglossia, where multilingual nations

include a variety of accents, language styles, dialects and languages. Each of

these factors is a reflection of the region and socio-economics background

from which you come from. In monolingual societies, the region and socio-

economic factors are determined by dialect and language style.

It is not uncommon in our nation to see that languages other than English are

spoken inside the home with friends and family. However when these

bilingual or even trilingual families interact socially outside of their home,

they will communicate in English. Even church services may use a variation

of the language, one that you would only hear in side the church or in school.

CHAPTER II

DISCUSSION

A. Sociolinguistic

Sociolinguistics is defined as:

1. The study that is concerned with the relationship between language and the

context in which it is used. In other words, it studies the relationship

between language and society. It explains we people speak differently in

different social contexts. It discusses the social functions of language and

the ways it is used to convey social meaning. All of the topics provides a

lot of information about the language works, as well as about the social

relationships in a community, and the way people signal aspects of their

social identity through their language (Jenet Holmes, 2001)

2. The study that is concerned with the interaction of language and setting

(Carol M. Eastman, 1975; 113).

3. The study that is concerned with investigating the relationship between

language and society with the goal of a better understanding of the

structure of language and of how languages function in communication (

Ronald Wardhaugh, 1986 : 12).

Sociolinguistics is a term including the aspects of linguistics applied

toward the connections between language and society, and the way we use it

in different social situations. It ranges from the study of the wide variety of

dialects across a given region down to the analysis between the way men and

women speak to one another. Sociolinguistics often shows us the humorous

realities of human speech and how a dialect of a given language can often

describe the age, sex, and social class of the speaker; it codes the social

function of a language.

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.

It is generally recognized that the term sociolinguistics was coined by

Currie (1952) in an article exploring the relationship between speech and

social status, which is of course still one of the main aims of the field (see

Chambers 2002, for a fuller description of Currie’s work). Currie’s paper did

not present any new data, but was basically a discussion of how some of the

trends then present in linguistics, especially in dialectology, could be

developed into a new field of investigation.

B. Language and Dialect

Language is the human ability to acquire and use complex systems of

communication, and a language is any specific example of such a system

(Wikipedia). Then, dialect is a variety of a language that is distinguished

from other varieties of the same language by features of phonology, grammar,

vocabulary and by its use by a group of speakers who are set off from others

geographically or socially.

Wardhaugh (2006) distinguish the terms language and dialect as follow:

Lower part of variety language is dialect and as the main part is language,

therefore we can say that Texas English and Swiss German are dialects of

English and German. Some languages have more than one dialect for instance

English are spoken in various dialects. Language and dialect can be the same

when language was spoken by a few people and has only one variety but

some expert say it is unsuitable to say dialect and language is the same

because the requirement of lower part cannot be found. We can say also

Dialect A, B, C and so on is the part of language X because it is spoken by

many varieties dialect A, B, C. Edward (2009) also define dialect as a variety

of a language that differs from others along three dimensions: vocabulary,

grammar and pronunciation (accent). Because they are forms of the same

language. He states also dialects are mutually unintelligible. Indeed language

is major part of dialect. The others dialect that is mutually unintelligible for

example Dutch and German speaker cannot understand each other even

basically both of them have same language, another example is Mandarin and

Cantonese, Thai and Lao, Hindi and Urdu, Serbia and Croatian etc.

Wardhaugh (2006) also distinguish the term vernacular and term Koine.

Vernacular is the speech passed down from parent to child as primary mode

of communication and Koine is speech shared by people of different

vernaculars. UNESCO in Mesthrie (2001) define also vernacular as a

language which is the mother tongue of a group which is socially or

politically dominated by another group speaking a different language.

Vernacular traditionally viewed as the mother tongue of a speaker, the

vernacular refers to non-standard varieties often recognized to stand in

contrast with the standard variety (Llamas et al., 2007).

Seven criteria of language :

1. Standardization: Codification of language: grammars, spelling books,

dictionaries, literature. It is possible to teach. To make standardization, it

requires choosing one elite vernacular and it can be prestigious.

2. Vitality: the existence of a living community of speakers.

3. Historicity: a particular group of people finds their identity by using a

particular language.

4. Autonomy: Other speakers of a language must be felt different from other

languages

5. Reduction: particular variety may be regarded as a sub-variety rather than

as an independent entity.

6. Mixture: Feelings about the purity or lack of purity of variety.

7. De facto norms: speakers recognize as ‘good’ speakers and ‘poor’ speakers

and that the good speakers represent the norms of proper usage. (Adopted

from Wardhaugh, 2006).

C. Regional Dialect

Certain differences from geographical area one to another in

pronunciation, in the selecting and constructing of words, and in syntax of a

language such distinctive varieties of local variety are called regional

dialects (Wardhough, 2006). The study that investigates different varieties on

the basis of clusters of similar and different features in particular regions,

towns or villages is called regional dialectology (Edward, 2009).

It is quite interesting that the discriminations respondents make in

exercises like the Map drawing task and the accent-ordering task are often

similar to the discriminations linguists make between varieties. Dialect–patois

distinction is Patois is usually used to describe only rural forms of speech; we

may talk about an urban dialect, but to talk about an urban patois. Patois also

seems to refer only to the speech of the lower strata in society; again, we may

talk about a middle-class dialect but not, apparently, about a middle-class

patois. Finally, a dialect usually has a wider geographical distribution than a

patois. According to Llamas et al. (2007) patois refer to a non-standard

spoken variety and can carry the negative connotation of ‘uneducated’, and so

is rarely used in sociolinguistics.

The term patois is found without negative connotation among some

speech communities. Dialect geography is the term used to describe attempts

made to map the distributions of various linguistic features so as to show their

geographical provenance. Now we go to Dialect vs. Accent section. Dialect

is the variety of vocabulary, syntax, pronunciation. Accent is variety only in

pronunciation. Accent also well-known as RP (receive pronunciation).

Standard English as the prestige dialect of British English, prescribed in

official and formal settings and approved for writing in the education system.

RP is standard accent which can be taught and it is prestigious. British accent

is preferred one to teach because it is lack a regional association within

England.

It is also known as BBC, Oxford, Queen English, and being Standard

English in England. It tends to be spoken by educated speakers regardless of

geographical origin.

D. Social Dialect

In Sociolinguistics, a variety of speech associated with a particular

social class or occupational group within a society. Also known as sociolect.

Social dialect or sociolect is a variety of language (a register) associated with

a social group such as a socioeconomic class, an ethnic group (precisely

termed ethnolect), an age group, etc (Wikipedia). Sociolects involve both

passive acquisition of particular communicative practices through association

with a local community, as well as active learning and choice among speech

or writing forms to demonstrate identification with particular groups.

Social dialect is difference speech associate with various social groups.

Social dialects create among social groups and are related to a variety of

factors such as social class, religion, and ethnicity. In India, for example,

caste is one of the clearest of all social differentiators. Branch of linguistic

study that linguistically city characterized is called social dialectology.

Even though we use the term 'social dialect' or 'sociolect' as a label for

the alignment of a set of language structures with the social position of a

group in a status hierarchy, the social demarcation of language does not exist

in a vacuum. Speakers are simultaneously affiliated with a number of

different groups that include region, age, gender, and ethnicity, and some of

these other factors may weigh heavily in the determination of the social

stratification of language variation. For example, among older European-

American speakers in Charleston, South Carolina, the absence of r in words

such as bear and court is associated with aristocratic, high-status groups

(McDavid 1948) whereas in New York City the same pattern of r-lessness is

associated with working-class, low-status groups (Labov 1966). Such

opposite social interpretations of the same linguistic trait over time and space

point to the arbitrariness of the linguistic symbols that carry social meaning.

In other words, it is not really the meaning of what you say that counts

socially, but who you are when you say it."

Ethnic group in USA AAVE (African American Vernacular English),

also known as Ebonics, Black English (BE), Black English Vernacular (BEV)

show hyper corrective tendencies in that they tend to overdo certain imitative

behaviors freely use the habitual form of misapplication rules. Hyper

correction is the overgeneralization of linguistic forms which carry obvious

social prestige often through the misapplication of rules (e.g. allows deletion

‘They are going’ can become ‘They going’ and dog pronounce as the vocal of

book : dug).

E. Styles, Registers And Beliefs

In sociolinguistics, a style is a set of linguistic variants with specific

social meanings. In this context, social meanings can include group

membership, personal attributes, or beliefs. Style relates to the typical ways in

which one or more people do a particular thing. Style in language behavior

thus becomes alternative ways of expressing the same content. Style is the

way speakers speak, the speaker also can make a choice weather informal and

formal, it depends on circumstance and the age and social group of participant

(Wardhaugh, 2006).

Registers are the varieties of language associated with people's

occupation. Registers are the languages that are used in the pursuance of

one's job. They are stylistic, functional varieties of a dialect or a language.

They may be narrowly defined by reference to subject matter (field of

discourse), to medium (mode of discourse) and level of formality, that is style

(manner of discourse). Registers are, therefore, situationally conditioned

discourse oriented varieties of a language.

Registers refer to particular ways of using language in particular

settings within that community. Register is a set of linguistic items were

associated with discrete occupational and social groups. Surgeons, airline

pilots, bank managers, sales clerks, jazz fans, and pimps employ different

registers, they develop similar vocabulary and intonation. we also talk about

dialect, register, and style independently, we may talk casually in local

variety of language, write formal technical study and also making judgment

“better or worse” to speaker who has the same background.

Registers may be classified on the basis of style. This refers to the

relation among the participating people who may talk of religion in a temple,

or at a seminar with scholars or in a restaurant with friends. In a religious

gathering people may be serious, in a seminar analytic while in a restaurant

casual. The following type of stylistic varieties may be noticed - archaic,

colloquial, humorous, formal and ironical.

Belief is systems of ideas or ideology, some people believed that certain

language is lack of grammar; we can speak English without accent. Also

English is believed false language; pronunciation is based on spelling, and

slipping language. The representations of belief can operate the interests of an

identifiable social class or cultural group. This tendency will create language

behavior and attitude by several group of people act or behave toward

language differently and sociolinguist should strive for understanding how

people behave toward language and linguistic feature rely on person as being

particular place, a social class members, and specific profession.

CHAPTER III

CONCLUSION

A. Conclusion

Sociolinguistics is a term including the aspects of linguistics applied

toward the connections between language and society, and the way we use it

in different social situations. It ranges from the study of the wide variety of

dialects across a given region down to the analysis between the way men and

women speak to one another.

Language is the human ability to acquire and use complex systems of

communication, and a language is any specific example of such a system

(Wikipedia). Then, dialect is a variety of a language that is distinguished

from other varieties of the same language by features of phonology, grammar,

vocabulary and by its use by a group of speakers who are set off from others

geographically or socially.

Certain differences from geographical area one to another in

pronunciation, in the selecting and constructing of words, and in syntax of a

language such distinctive varieties of local variety are called regional dialects.

Social dialect is difference speech associate with various social groups.

Social dialects create among social groups and are related to a variety of

factors such as social class, religion, and ethnicity.

Style relates to the typical ways in which one or more people do a

particular thing. Style in language behavior thus becomes alternative ways of

expressing the same content. Registers refer to particular ways of using

language in particular settings within that community. Register is a set of

linguistic items were associated with discrete occupational and social groups.

Belief is systems of ideas or ideology, some people believed that certain

language is lack of grammar, we can speak English without accent.

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