Chapter 8 Society.ppt

Sociolinguistics --- a sub-field of linguists that studies the relation between language and society, between the uses of language and the social structures in which the users of language live. The relatedness between language and society There are many indications of the inter-relationship between language and society. 1 Language is often used to establish and maintain social relationships. (e.g. greetings hello, hi) 2 The use of language is in part determined by the user’s social background. (social class, age, sex, education level, etc.) 3 Language, especially the structure of its lexicon, reflects both the physical and the social environments of a society. (“snow” for Eskimo) 4 As a social phenomenon language is closely related to the structure of the society in which it is used, the evaluation of a linguistic form is entirely social ( the postvocalic [r] ). car, cigar London New York Speech community and Speech variety 言语社团和言语变体 Speech community --- in sociolinguistic studies, the social group that is singled out for any special sociolinguistic study is called the speech community. （单独划分出来用以进行特殊的研究的社会群体被称为言语社团） For general linguistics, a speech community is defined as a group of people who form a community and share the same language or a particular variety of a language. Any distinguishable form of speech used by a speaker or a group of speakers. (某个言者或某群言者所使用的任何具有区别性特征的言语形式） In sociolinguistic three types of speech variety are of special interest, i.e. regional dialects(地域方言） sociolects（社会方言） registers（语域）. Chinese Dialects Two approaches to sociolinguistic studies Macro sociolinguistics（宏观社会语言学） the sociology of language(语言社会学） i.e. a bird’s-eye view of the languages used in society Micro sociolinguistics （微观社会语言学） the sociolinguistics(社会语言学） i.e. a worm’s-eye view of language in use. Outline Dialectal varieties Register Degree of formality Varieties of language Dialectal Varietie