Sociolinguistics and Language Development

Aspects of Language and Society: A Summary

• Sociolinguistics studies the effect of society on language and the effect of language on society.

• It overlaps with linguistic anthropology and pragmatics.

• Sociolinguistics studies how language usage varies among social classes and produces reflective socio-economic classes.

• Sociolinguistics can be studied through interviews, matched-guise tests, and observations of dialects and speaking.

• The study of sociolinguistics was pioneered by linguists such as William Labov and Basil Bernstein.

• Sociolinguistics can be applied to study how social attitudes determine appropriate and inappropriate language use and how language is used as a social institution.

• Sociolinguistics studies the variation in language usage based on demographic variables such as ethnicity, religion, gender, level of education, age, etc.

• The sociolinguistic interview is the foundational method of collecting data for sociolinguistic studies.

• Fundamental concepts in sociolinguistics include speech community, high prestige and low prestige varieties, and social network.

• Sociolinguistics studies class and occupation as linguistic markers in society.

• Class aspirations influence speech patterns, resulting in hypercorrection.

• Basil Bernstein developed the method for categorizing language codes according to variable emphases on verbal and extraverbal communication.Language Codes and Child Development

• Basil Bernstein defined restricted and elaborated codes which are two different types of communication patterns.

• Restricted code is typical in environments where social roles are predetermined and communication is performed more through extraverbal means.

• Elaborated code is typical in environments where a variety of social roles are available to the individual, to be chosen based upon disposition and temperament.

• Bernstein explains language development according to the two codes in light of their fundamentally different values.

• A child exposed solely to restricted code learns extraverbal communication over verbal, and therefore may have a less extensive vocabulary than a child raised with exposure to both codes.

• Children who have been exposed solely to restricted code may encounter difficulties upon entering formal education.

• It may be beneficial for children who have been exposed solely to restricted code to enter pre-school training in elaborated code in order to acquire a manner of speaking that is considered appropriate and widely comprehensible within the education environment.

• Studies show a relative lack of success on verbal tasks in comparison to extraverbal in children from lower working classes (having been exposed solely to restricted code).

• The idea of these social language codes from Bernstein contrasts with famous linguist Noam Chomsky's ideas.

• The study of language variation is concerned with social constraints determining language in its contextual environment.

• Variation may also be associated with gender, ethnicity, economic status, level of education, etc.