Sociolinguistics
                       Sociolinguistics
                       Sociolinguistics
                       Sociolinguistics
                        Language and Society
                        Language and Society
      August 30, 2022        intro 2 ling/ssn/2007           2
                      What is it?
      •the study of interrelationships of language and 
        social structure, of linguistic variation, and of 
        attitudes toward language
      •Concerns with the part language which plays in 
        maintaining the social roles in a community
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      • Some factors influencing the choice of sounds, 
        grammatical elements and vocabulary items
        → age, sex, education, occupation, race, 
        peer group identification etc
      • e.g. He don’t know nothing instead of He 
        doesn’t know anything.
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               Speech Varieties
                    Standard (superposed variety)
                 Sociolects: socio-economic status, gender, ethnic group, age, 
   Speech        occupation, others
   Varieties
                  Regional Varieties
                 Registers: casual, formal, technical, simplified, others
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                   Dialects
     •IDIOLECT
       → different individual languages
     •DIALECT
       → a sufficient number of people share 
       knowledge of language
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