Sociolinguistics Syllabus PDF

# Syllabus ## 1. Introduction ## 2. Sociolinguistics and the Sociology of Language - Sociolinguistics is the effect of society on language/the relationship between language and society with the goal of understanding the structure of language and of how languages function in communication. - Socio...

# Syllabus ## 1. Introduction ## 2. Sociolinguistics and the Sociology of Language - Sociolinguistics is the effect of society on language/the relationship between language and society with the goal of understanding the structure of language and of how languages function in communication. - Sociology attempts to understand how societies are structured and how people manage to live together. - Sociology of language aims to find out how social structure can be better understood through the study of language. - The scope of sociolinguistics/ what do sociolinguistics study? ## 3. Languages and Communities - Languages: Standard Arabic, French, Spanish - Varieties: Moroccan Arabic, Algerian Arabic, Egyptian Arabic - _social variety:_ social status - _gender variety:_ male/female - _regional variety:_ north, middle, south - _Ethnic variety:_ Race Blacks/whites - Dialects: Fassi Dialect, Merrakchi Dialect - Style: the individual way of speaking - Register: set of linguistic items used within a group of people - Standardization: the codification of the language ## 4. Pidgins, Creoles and Lingua-franca - Pidgin is regarded as languages of trade between the traders. - A Creole: Many of the languages which are called pidgins are in fact now creole languages. They are learned by children as their first language and used in a wide range of domains. - Langua-Franca: Language that is spoken in different contexts by people from different speech communities e.g. English ## 5. Codes - Diaglossia and Triaglossia: the use of high variety and Low variety in a speech community. E.g formal&informal contexts - Bilingualism: the context where two languages are spoken - Multilingualism: the context where more than two languages are spoken - Code-switching & code mixing: mixing between << codes >> at different level ## 6. Speech Community - Group of people speaking the same language variety who share the same culture and sometimes geography with regard to how their language should be used. - They share the same community and the same linguistic codes. ## 7. Language Death and Language Revitalization - The phrase 'language death' sounds as stark and final as any other in which that word makes its unwelcome appearance. And it has similar implications and resonances. To say that a language is dead is like saying that a person is dead. It could be no other way - for languages have no existence without people. ## 8. Language and Identity - I will explore the multifaceted relationship between language and identity, examining how language acquisition, variations, gender, minority status, and power dynamics contribute to the construction of one's identity. ## 9. Theory of Language Aquisition - Applied linguistics: an interdisciplinary field which identifies, investigates, and offers solutions to language-related real-life problems - Pyscholinguistics: studies psychological processes that make it possible for humans to master and use language - Neurolinguistics: The study of how language is represented in the brain ## 10. Theory of Language Use - Sociolinguistics: the study of the relationship between language and society. - Pragmatics: studies the use of language in context ## 11. Chomsky - Chomsky distinguishes between what he has called competence and performance. He claims that it is the linguist's task to characterize what speakers know about their language, i.e., their competence, not what they do with their language, i.e., their performance. ## 12. Language and Society - Society is any group of people who are drawn together for a certain purpose or purposes and who share the same language. - Language is linguistic items, such entities as sounds, words, grammatical structures - Language is also an act of identity: it tells who you are - Sociolinguistics studies/examines relationships between 'linguistic items' on the one hand and concepts such as power, social class, identity, face, and politeness. ## 13. Society and Language - It is concerned with how language use interacts with, or is affected by, social factors such as gender, ethnicity, age or social class. - Its main concern is to uncover, describe and interpret the socially motivated choices an individual makes. ## 14. Social Factors Affecting the Language - Social: education, social class, ethnic group, gender, and age - The relationship between speaker and the receiver: family, friends, employer, teacher, students... - The context: formal, informal ## 15. Relationship Between Language and Society 1. That social structure may either influence or determine linguistic structure and or behavior 2. Linguistic structure and/or behavior may either influence or determine social structure 3. The influence is bi-directional: language and society may influence each other 4. There is no relationship at all between linguistic structure and social structure and that each is independent of the other ## 16. Sociolinguistic Situation in Morocco: Language Use - The languages spoken in Morocco are Classical Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic, Moroccan Arabic, Amazigh, French, and Spanish (as well as English) ## 17. Variety? - It is a term used to include any identifiable kind of language. - A set of linguistic items with similar distribution. - E.g. Tachelhit and Tamazight are varieties of Amazigh. Moroccan Arabic and Algerian Arabic are two varieties of Standard Arabic. ## 18. Sociolinguists - Labov - Fishman - Ferguson - Spolsky - Trudgill - Bentahila - Moha Ennji ## 19. Dialect - A language that is specific to a country, region, or social class. - A mode of pronunciation within a language that is specific to a country, region, or social class. ## 20. Dialect vs. Accent - **Accent:** pronunciation - **Dialect:** pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary ## 21. Register - Registers are sets of language items associated with discrete occupational or social groups - Hudson (1996, p.46) says "your dialect shows who (or what) you are, whilst your register shows what you are doing! (Jargon is an alternative term that is sometimes used for this kind of language)." ## 22. Criteria for a Language - Mutual intelligibility: ability/inability to understand other varieties/dialects. E.g Cookney and New York English. Tamazight and Tarifit. - Literary heritage: sizable body of written literature/possession of literature - Linguistic: complex grammar, phonology; syntax... (case marking in Arabic) - Socio Political: the power, the position. - Standardization: the process of officialization. ## 23. Dialect and Sociolect - A sociolect is a language variety influenced by certain social factors and groups. The main factors are ethnicity, age, status, occupation, and gender. It differs in terms of lexicon, grammar, and prounciation. - African American English - "He here instead of "he is here" William Labov ## 24. Standardization - Selection: A particular variety must be accepted by the society as the one to be developed into a standard language. It requires to be socially and politically powerful. - Codification: there must be a dictionary and grammar books for general agreement about what is right and what is wrong. - Elaboration of function: For the variety selected to represent the desired norms, it must be able to discharge a whole range of functions that it may be called upon to discharge, including abstract, intellectual functions. ## 25. Beliefs - It is systems of ideas or ideology. It is how people perceive things within a network. - Language beliefs are well entrenched as are language attitudes and language behaviors. - E.g. language behavior: the teaching of correct words. ## 26. Lingua Franca - Lingua franca as 'a language which is used habitually by people whose mother tongues are different in order to facilitate communication between them.' - Today, English is used in very many places and for very many purposes as a lingua franca, e.g., in travel, trade, commerce, and international relations. ## 27. Other Terms for Lingua Franca - A trade language - Contact language - International language - Auxiliary language ## 28. Pidgins - A pidgin is a language with no native speakers: it is no one's first language but is a contact language. That is, it is the product of a multilingual situation in which those who wish to communicate must find or improvise a simple language system that will enable them to do so. - A pidgin arises from the simplification of a language when that language comes to dominate various groups of speakers separated from one another by language differences. - There are various reasons for pidgins to arise and one reason is that the people do not have a common language to communicate, therefore the need for communication leads them to create a pidgin. A good example for this is the slaves who were brought from Africa in the nineteenth century to North America to work on the plantations. ## 29. Pidginization - It generally involves some kind of simplification of a language, e.g., reduction in morphology (word structure), syntax (grammatical structure), and tolerance of considerable phonological variation (pronunciation) ## 30. Example of Pidgins - Pidgin Chinese English - Tok Pisin in Papua New Guinea - Nigerian Pidgin English - Juba Arabic in Sudan ## 31. Some Linguistic Characteristics - Pidgins are rule governed: - Vocabularies are originally from the dominant language: lexifer language. - The grammar, the syntactic system and the phonological system are similar to the subordinate languages. ## 32. Examples - English based Krio: i no tu had (It's not too hard) - English based Bislama: Hem ya haos blong mif (this is my house) - Nigerian English pidgin: Talk-talk matter (information), di law wey di council put on top dirty matter (waste disposal regulations) ## 33. Grammatical Features: << Nigerian Pidgin >>> - Relative Pronoun *wey* - ENGLISH: that which, who. E.g everybody wey be igbo man. Everybody who is an igbo man. - Reduplication: carry-carry, talk-talk, proper-proper. To show emphasis. - Dental sound: month: t - Fricative sound: there: t ## 34. Other Examples - Dropping unnecessary complications such as inflections (e.g. two knives becomes two knife). ## 35. Creole - Creole is often defined as a pidgin that has become the first language of a new generation of speakers. - Creole is a pidgin which has expanded in structure and vocabulary to express the range of meanings and serve the range of functions required of a first language. ## 36. Differences Between Creoles and Pidgins | | Pidgins | Creoles | | --------------------- | ---------------------------- | ---------------------------- | | **L1 speakers** | No L1 speakers | L1 speakers | | **Usage** | Used only in trade/business | Used in all domains | | **Grammar** | Variable, inconsistent | Systematic | | **Vocabulary** | Umited vocabulary | Diversified vocabulary | ## 37. Where are Creoles Spoken? This map shows the locations where the pidgins and creole languagues covered by the APICS project are spoken. ## 38. The Distribution - South west of Africa - The Caribbean - Asia - India ## 39. Creolization - Creolization involves expansion morphology and syntax, regularization phonology, deliberate increase number functions language used development rational stable system increasing vocabulary. ## 40. Examples of Creoles - The vernacular language of Haiti is a creole. - Gullah in US - British Creole - Jamaican creole - Sierra Leone Creole - Torres strait creole ## 41. 127 Pidgins and Creoles - Thirty-five of these are English-based: Hawaiian Creole, Gullah or Sea Islands Creole, Cameroon Pidgin English, Tok Pisin... - Fifteen are French-based: Louisiana Creole, Haitian Creole, Seychelles Creole, and Mauritian Creole. - Fourteen others are Portuguese-based: Papiamentu, Guiné Creole, SenegalCreole. - Seven are Spanish-based: Cocoliche. - Five are Dutchbased: Negerhollands. - Three are Italian-based: Asmara Pidgin spoken in Ethiopia. - Six are German-based: Yiddish.