PowerPoint Presentation

Intro to Sociolinguistics

An exploration into the relationship between language and culture.

Fundamental Question

a.What is the relationship between language and culture?

b.Humans are the only animal to have culture.

c.Humans are the only animal to have language.

d. How do the two connect?

e. What is language? what members of a particular society speak (Wardhaugh 1).

Different cases

a.I know I don't speak English correctly.

b.Most French-Canadians prefer to speak French, even though they can speak English too.

c.The treaty wasn't ready to sign until both sides had a chance to look over the language.

continued

d. A polyglot is someone who knows many languages. A linguist is someone who can analyze language structure.

e. English is the most widely-spoken language in the world.

f. When Fred speaks to Sam, sometimes he uses English and sometimes Arabic.

Lets have a go at discussion question 4 on page 7 of Wardhaugh.

Three Views of Language

Language as Grammar:

Language as communication:

Language as thing:

Language as Grammar

The object of a science of linguistics (Saussure).

Syntactic Structures

Review of Skinner: Verbal Behavior (1959)

Universal Grammar

difference between surface structure and deep structure in language

Noam Chomsky (1928-)

Grammar

Three sub-systems

Representational

Phonology (sounds), graphic, gestural

Lexical

morphology; words and morphemes

(Syn)tactic = syntax

Language as communication

Language as Text.

The Interaction of People

The Interpretation of Texts

What do you communicate? Ideas? Emotions? Intentions?

How do you communicate?

Messages:

The interpretation of messages

The construction of messages

Language as thing

Language as an element in social constructs.

Language planning, code switching, dialect debates.

Note: to distinguish between and language and communication, look at the following questions:

1. Is language as Dawkins suggests part of the DNA of homosapiens?

2. Is there a creative component (the horrible honeybee story)

Competence v. Performance

Langue vparole

Structure vevent

Structuralv communicative

universalvdialect

Approaches to language and culture

Wardhaugh, quite sensibly, argues that sociolinguistics is both macrolinguistic and microlinguistic:

Microlinguistic-- language emphasis

Macrolinguistics social emphasis

Whorf, Politeness; French Structuralism (Lvi-Strauss).

Communicative approaches: p. 14

Language and power (Fairclough), Social construction of reality (Berger and Luckmann); Language and Symbolic Power (Bourdieu); Pragramatics (Austin)

Use Approaches:

Language Planning, Multilingualism

Relations between language and culture Wardhaugh pp. 9-11

Social structure may influence or determine linguistic structure and/or behaviour

Linguistic structure/behaviour influences or determines social structure (Whorfian hypothesis)

3. Language and society affect each other4. No relationship at all between language and culture

Sociolinguists whatever it is, is about asking important questions concerning the relationship of language to society (Wardhaugh 11)