The essence of sociolinguistics depends on two facts about language that are often ignored in the field of linguistics. First, language varies – speakers have more than one way to say more or less the same thing. Second, there is a critical purpose that language serves for its users that is just as important as the obvious one. It is obvious that language is supposed to be used for transmitting information and thoughts from one person to another. At the same time, however, the speaker is using language to make statements about who are she, what her group loyalties are, how she perceives her relationship to her hearer, and what sort of speech event she considers herself to be engaged in.
2."Language is an autonomous, self- sufficient system." Whose definition is it: a formal linguist's or a sociolinguist's? Prove your opinion.
This definition from sociolinguists. There is a question how language can be studied in other way. Noam Chomsky as a successor of Leonard Bloomfield ideas studied language autonomously, as a self-sufficient system. He aimed to find a basic universal grammatical structure that could account for the similarities in the organization of languages, without needing to appeal to the social context in which language is used. For Chomsky, the existence of variation in language simply confuses, diverting the linguist’s attention from the wonderful abstract system that separates human language from other communication systems. For the sociolinguist, however, the most important verity is that a language – any language - is full of systematic variation, variation that can only be accounted for by appealing, outside language, to socially relevant forces and facts.
3."There is no single-style or single-variety speaker". Whose meaning is it: formal linguists or sociolinguist's? Prove your opinion.
Sociolinguistics takes its primary tasks to map linguistic variation on to social conditions. This mapping helps understand not just synchronic variation (variation at a single point of time), but also diachronic variation (variation over time) or language change. Even before small children can speak clearly, they develop a distinct style of address to be used when speaking to anyone or anything smaller. As they grow, they add more and more variations to their speech, and these come to be associated with recognizable styles. The existence of patterned variations in language makes it possible to identify ourselves and others as belonging to certain groups. The social prestige or stigma associated with these variations makes language a source of social and political power.
4. Continue the definition: "Linguistics, anthropology, sociology, social psychology are the major fields contributing to…"
The interdisciplinary nature of sociolinguistics has been marked by many researchers. Tucker summarizes 5 cross-cutting themes that he found salient in forming a new discipline. First, the major fields contributing to sociolinguistics were linguistics, anthropology, sociology, and social psychology. Second, the field appears to have emerged partially in response to a number of well-articulated and compelling social issues. Third, all the evidence points to a small number of key individuals whose worked in leadership, publications, and conferences, was essential to nurturing the young field. Fourth, he finds a difference in worldview, models, questions, and problems between participants from the center and those from the periphery. Fifth, the early initiatives prospered at least in part because of continuing ‘patronage’ from a small number of organizations and associations.
5."Language is an autonomous universal system, significant elements of which are to be explained by the very design and structure of the human brain". Who is the author of this definition: Formal linguists, psychologists or sociolinguists?"
Every branch of linguistics has its own aim. For example, the formal linguist pursues an autonomous universal system, significant elements of which are to be explained by the very design and structure of the human brain. The psycholinguist asks how such a system works and how it can be learned or lost. The sociolinguist asks how it is used in a living and complex speech community. The answers to each of these questions is important to the applied linguist, concerned, among other matters, with how to help people learn language and how to use it effectively to deal with the problems of practical everyday life. The sociolinguist looks at the complex connection between the variations within a language and the matching variations in the social groups that use it. Why do I say ‘Good morning’ to some people, and ‘Hi!’ to others? How did Professor Higgins know which parts of Eliza Doolittle’s speech needed to be changed to make her pass for a member of the upper class? Sociolinguistics is all about variation, and seeks socially relevant explanations for regular patterns of variation in language use.
6. Explain, why do people say ‘Good morning’ to some people, and ‘Hi!’ to others?
Every branch of linguistics has its own aim. For example, the formal linguist pursues an autonomous universal system, significant elements of which are to be explained by the very design and structure of the human brain. The psycholinguist asks how such a system works and how it can be learned or lost. The sociolinguist asks how it is used in a living and complex speech community. The answers to each of these questions is important to the applied linguist, concerned, among other matters, with how to help people learn language and how to use it effectively to deal with the problems of practical everyday life. The sociolinguist looks at the complex connection between the variations within a language and the matching variations in the social groups that use it. Why does say ‘Good morning’ to some people, and ‘Hi!’ to others? How did Professor Higgins know which parts of Eliza Doolittle’s speech needed to be changed to make her pass for a member of the upper class? Sociolinguistics is all about variation, and seeks socially relevant explanations for regular patterns of variation in language use.
7. What kind of division of sociolinguistics - micro or macro - the following question belongs to? "Why in New York City, for instance, do people pronounce the word ‘this’as /dis/ or pronounce ‘bird’ as /bɔid/?"
In the micro-sociolinguistics the sociolinguist’s goal might be to show how specific differences in pronunciation or grammar lead members of a speech community to make judgments about the education or economic status of a speaker. In New York City, for instance, pronouncing the word ‘this’as /dis/ or pronouncing ‘bird’ as /bɔid/, marks the social class of the speaker.
8. Choose the right word: "In (macro/micro)-sociolinguistics, we treat language (and a specific language) alongside other human cultural phenomena." Prove your opinion.
In macro-sociolinguistics the scholar’s primary attention turns from the specific linguistic phenomena to the whole of a language or variety. In macro-sociolinguistics, we treat language (and a specific language) alongside other human cultural phenomena. We might ask, for instance, about the significance of a group of immigrants shifting completely to a new language or maintaining their old one for some purposes. Why did most immigrants to the USA from Northern Europe drop their home language so fast, while Asian immigrants to Britain seem to be keeping theirs alive? We might investigate the close bonds between language choice and social identity, asking why their language remained so important to Maoris, Basques, or Frisians that they have been willing to undertake political action to preserve it. These questions concern the use of a language or a language variety as a whole rather than individual variations, and asking them makes the study of language a means to understanding a society.
9. How can you explain the following expression: "How can we observe the way people speak when they are not being observed?"
In sociolinguistics methods of enquiry are closely connected to the questions what to study and how to study which are closely related. The reason for this concern is because we need to observe a dynamic phenomenon in its natural setting. There is a riddle which Labov labeled as the observer’s paradox, namely: how can we observe the way people speak when they are not being observed? There has been no definitive answer. Sociolinguists have countered the paradox in different way.
10. Continue the expression: "Observers and quantifiers are…"
The sociolinguistic data is a key one in any discipline. There is a tension between the observers and quantifiers. The classical example is the two famous sociolinguists Joshua Fishman and John Gumpertz who were working together on a study of bilingualism among Puerto Ricans in the Jersey City. Joshua Fishman had his background in sociology and psychology and used mostly statistical calculation, while Gumperz, trained as an ethnographer, would discovered his data through observation of the use of language in a natural setting. Whatever method they choose, what sociolinguists are looking for is evidence of socially accepted rules accounting for variations in speech. Some of these data can be collected by observation, some by elicitation. Whether to trust the observation is of course a problem: the speaker might be pretending or lying. All of these methodological problems are inevitable in the study of a living phenomenon like language in its social use. Many studies make use of multiple data collected in a number of different ways.
Is the following division of the speech repertoire functional or spatial?: 1. Most people spoke Navajo up to a few years ago, but most writing was done in English.
The speech repertoire may be divided functionally as well as spatially. On the Navajo Reservation in the Western United States, most people spoke Navajo up to a few years ago, but most writing was done in English. The many FM radio stations announced the Country and Western music they played most of the time in Navajo, but the tribal newspaper was published only in English. The Tribal Council conducted its meetings in Navajo (using an interpreter for communication with government officials), but its decisions were recorded and published in English. Most schools at that time tried to teach Navajo-speaking pupils to read English. In the last few years, more and more children have been starting to speak English.
Who is William Labov? What kinds of researches did he conduct? The sociolinguistic interview, modeled on the format developed by William Labov, is one of the most common techniques for gathering samples of language.
That was a major shift in research techniques occurred with the publication of Labov’s work on English in New York City. His description of urban speech was based on a study of 88 individuals from a socially stratified random sample, consisting of male and female speakers from three age groups and four social classes (identified on the basis of education, occupation, and income). Labov showed that variation in the speech of the individual was a reflection of variation in the social group by illustrating how the most extreme case of stylistic variation in the use of /r/ by a single speaker was in conformity with the overall pattern exemplified in group scores of the different social classes. Labov’s work on language use in New York City provided a blueprint for current methods of investigating variation in language use. As part of his research on the Lower-East side of New York City, he developed the sociolinguistic interview, the corner-stone of sociolinguistic research today. The sociolinguistic interview aims at eliciting linguistic data in different speech contexts. It comprises an informal part for eliciting vernacular or local use, and a formal part (consisting of a reading passage, word lists and minimal pairs/ A minimal pair represents two words of distinct meaning that differ in only one sound, i.e., ‘pet/bet’, ‘bit/bet’/ to elicit various degrees of formal or standard language use.