Teaching notes for Sociolinguistics【DOC精选】.docVIP

Unit one Introduction to Sociolinguistics Sociolinguistics : came into being 1960s Definition: sociolinguistics is the science which deals with the relationship between language and society. sociolinguistics is the study of the language in relation to social factors, that is, social class, educational level, age , sex, ethnic origin, etc. Linguists differ as to what they include under sociolinguistics. Many would include the detailed study of interpersonal communication, sometimes called micro-linguistics, e.g. SPEECH ACT, SPEECH EVENT, SEQUENCE of UTTERANCE, and those investigations which relate variation in the language used by a group of people to social factors ( see sociolect ---also social dialect , a variety of a language (dialect) used by people belonging to a special social class. The speaker of a sociolect usually shares a similar socioeconomic and or educational background. Sociolect may be classed as high( in STATUS) or low ( in STTUS) . For example: He and I were going there. ( higher sociolect ) Im’n me was goin’ there. (lower sociolect ) The difference between one sociolect and another can be investigated by analyzing the recorded speech of large samples of speakers from various social backgrounds. The differences are referred to as sociolectal variation or social dialectal variation. Language variation refers to differences in pronunciation, grammar, or word choice within a language . Variation in a language may be related to regions, or social class or educational background or to the degree of formality of a situation in which language is used. Such areas as the study of language choice in bilingual or multilingual communities, language planning, language attitude, etc, may be included under sociolinguistics and are sometimes referred to as macrolinguistics, or they are considered as being part of the SOCIOLOGY of language (语言社会学) or the social psychology of language.（语言社会心理学） Sociolinguistics emphasizes the social influence on