8 Language and Society.pptVIP

Chapter 8 Language and Society 1. The scope of sociolinguistics 1.1 The relatedness between language and society between the uses of language and the social structures in which the users of language live. Sociolinguists are interested in explaining why we speak differently in different social contexts, and they are concerned with identifying the social functions of language and the ways it is used to convey social meaning. ?Example 1 Ray: Hi mum Mum: Hi. You are late. Ray: Yeah, that bastard Sootbucket kept us in again. Mum: Nana is here. Ray: Oh sorry. Where is she? The way people talk is influenced by the social context in which they are talking. It matters who can hear us and where we are talking as well as how we are feeling. We use different styles in different social contexts. Example 2 Ray: Good morning, sir. Principle: What are you doing here at this time? Ray: Mr. Sutton kept us in , Sir. One does not need to be very observant to find that certain linguistic phenomena cannot be accounted for unless they are placed in the general context of society. In other words, social factors cannot be excluded from our description of language and language use. There are many indications of the inter-relationship between language and society. One of them is that while language is principally used to communicate meaning, it is also used to establish and maintain social relationships. E.g .greetings Another indication is that users of the same language in a sense all speak differently. The kind of language each of them chooses to use is in part determined by his social background. And language, in its turn, reveals information about its speaker. When we speak, we cannot avoid giving clues to our listeners about ourselves. Example 3 ? Name Speaker When Robert grandparents home, letters teachers school doctor hospital mother when anno