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CHAPTER VIII Sociolinguistics and Its Future.
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The study of language, its various function, its varieties, how they are in contact, changing, and then given particular attitudes by the speakers and wished to be controlled by the government, has been developed and widely known as a field named sociolinguistics. • But similar interests in sociolinguistics are shared with other linguistic disciplines.
A. Sociolinguistics and Anthropological Linguistics • Both sociolinguistics and anthropological linguistics are concerned with the study of language in society. Sociolinguistics is concerned with how society is influenced by and influences language use. Anthropological linguistics describes this language interaction as it relates to the various peoples or cultural groups of the world. • The traditional areas of linguistic study (phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics) are not studied or described in isolation from the person's experiences, cultural or social group memberships and/or cultural practices. Rather, the sociolinguist or anthropological linguist aims to describe language in terms of how it is lived by individuals and members of similar social or cultural groups.
Studying the relationships between language and culture or examining language in its social context can lead the linguist to investigate such important phenomena as: code-switching, language variation, bilingualism, creoles and language shift, culturally defined concepts such as kinship and language avoidance, discourse and conversation analysis. • Linguists employ primarily qualitative research methodologies, typically ethnography and forms of discourse analysis, to gather sufficient data to enable the rigorous analysis and synthesis of information required to adequately describe language use, however survey methods are also used in sociolinguistics.
An example of the kind of research question which lends itself to this type of study could include the analysis of language use by Aboriginal English speaking Indigenous children within a Standard Australian English speaking classroom environment. • Sociolinguistics and anthropological linguistics has special relevance for those language professionals required to work cross-culturally such as language teachers and speech pathologists. The application of these methodologies is equally relevant when either describing languages as spoken by individuals and groups of individuals or when describing aspects of language development and language disorder.
B. Sociolinguistics and Dialectology • Dialectology is a study of geographical varieties of language. From the definition dialectology seems to be a part of sociolinguistics areas. However, there are at least two main differences between the two. • First, dialectology is interested in historical development of language varieties and it survey mainly the comparison between the dialects and the standard code, whereas sociolinguistics is more interested in synchronic analysis and describes the relations between the language varieties and the social dynamism. • Secondly, dialectologists are concerned with analyzing various linguistics forms and the cognates, while sociolinguistics takes the as important objects of analysis only when the social issues are correlated to them. After all, both share interests in language varieties and the significance of them in understanding the concept and idea of a language.
C. Sociolinguistics and psycholinguistics • Psycholinguistics is a field in which psychologists and linguists work together. Psychologists dedicate their time investigating areas such as first-language acquisition, second-language development language handicaps, etc. some topics traditionally associated with sociolinguistics such as bilingualism and transfer (borrowings) have been also recently entering psycholinguistics. • While sociolinguists are perhaps have more interest in understanding how social factors influence the development of bilinguals’ language performances, psycholinguists are more trained in finding how the development of the internal cognitive aspects of human being contribute to the linguistic competence of the bilinguals. • A discipline named socio-psycholinguisticsperhaps should be blended to tackle the areas where sociolinguists and psycholinguists may work hand in hand.
D. Sociolinguistics and Ecolinguistics • EignarIngvaldHaugen ( 1906-1994 ) had not only proposed a taxonomy on borrowing-words, which has been one of the highlights in sociolinguistics, but also initiated the study of language with its relation to ecosystem, named the ecology of language in 1970. As supports and interest in the idea were growing, the study was soon developed into what it is known today as Ecolinguistics.
Ecolinguistics approach emphasizes the importance of the environmental analysis in the study of language acquisition. An earlier attempt in blending the study was noted in 1912 when the American structuralist Edward Sapir (1884-1939) published Language and Environment. • At that time Sapir suggested that the study focused on the relation between the vocabulary and the natural (physical) and social environment of its users. Regarding this view, the contact between Ecolinguistics and sociolinguistics should be mainly in analyzing vocabulary changes, including their phonological and semantic aspects, with a focus on the environmental factors believed to be prominent to them.
E. Sociolinguistics and Pragmatics • Bachman (1986) puts forth the model of language competence as consisting of organizational competence and pragmatic competence. Pragmatic competence includes illocutionary competence or the abilities to think, manipulate ideas, use imagination and search for language data, and sociolinguistic competence or knowledge of the sociolinguistic conventions which direct appropriate language use within a particular culture and varying settings/topics in that culture. • Adapting Faerch and Kasper’s (1983) model of speech production that includes a communicative goal, a planning process, a plan, and the execution of that plan through neurological and physiological processes, Bachman's (1986) presents a comprehensive model of language use which maps the processes of message transmission within the framework of language use. • The model points out the characteristics of language use as linguistically rule-governed by socio-cultural codes, the dimension which needs further elaboration as we are dealing with a modern living language within a living/changing and varying culture(s).
F. Sociolinguistics and Applied Linguistics • There are many things applied linguistics can benefit from studying sociolinguistics. Ex: In the field of translation we have some theoretical about the notions of loanwords, loanblends and loan shift, it will be straightforward assistance to translator deciding whether a foreign item is the best “fully-borrowed” , “translated”,”blended”, or “shifted”. • Some understanding about geographical dialects (British and American British, Singaporean English,etc) or other varieties (standard English and informal variety) is also helpful in finding a more contextually acceptable translation. • In the field of language teaching, an understanding about language functions and language attitudes are essential. Regarding the significance role of language in teaching and learning activities, a theory called language failure theory suggested that students could fail in school because they speak different language or variety of language.
G. Sociolinguistics in the Future • Sociolinguistics developed in the 1960s. The study was in progress out of the problems faced by linguistics during the years of studying speech varieties. Sociolinguistic is more challenging than math. Everywhere, in the past, present until in the future one plus one was two that was exact in math. It’s different to sociolinguistic; every language is not only changing from the time to time but also place to place. • In this era there is new field called sociolinguistics and cyber-linguistics. It discusses about the netting language as the development of technology. For example; term “like” in FB, “mention” in twitter or “nge-twitt”. • Nobody will deny that technology is certainly going to be one of the most influential aspects in developed societies in the future. And more critical approach in sociolinguistics should be prepared to foresee the situation.
