The branches of the humanities include not only the Russian language and literature, as many believe. Here you can highlight a range of scientific disciplines. One of the lesser known is sociolinguistics. Few can tell with confidence what it is. Although in the linguistic development of modern society - sociolinguistics as a science plays a big role. See below for more details.
Sociolinguistics is ... Definition
First of all, this is one of the branches of linguistics, which studies the relationship between language and its conditions of existence in society, and which has a practical character. That is, the concept of sociolinguistics is closely intertwined with several similar disciplines - linguistics, sociology, psychology and ethnography.
History briefly
For the first time that linguistic variation is determined by social factors, noticed already in the 17th century. And the first written observation belongs to Gonzalo de Correas, a professor at the University of Salamanca in Spain. He clearly distinguished linguistic features of people depending on the social status of the observed.
The development of sociolinguistics as a science started in the early 20th century. Therefore, this branch of linguistics is considered quite young. For the first time this term was used by the American sociologist Herman Curry in 1952. And in 1963 in the United States formed the world's first committee on sociolinguistics.
Modern sociolinguistics is experiencing a surge of interest on the part of people that is not directly related to this scientific discipline. This is due to extralinguistic processes. That is, with processes that relate to reality. The largest of them at the moment is globalization.
Problems of Sociolinguistics
In sociolinguistics, a number of problems can be distinguished, however, as in other sciences. They help to form the correct impression of what exactly people of this scientific discipline are doing.
- One of the most important that scientists are studying is the social differentiation of the language, that is, the study of various variations of one language at all structural levels. The appearance of different variants of the same language unit may directly depend on social conditions. It also includes the study of language changes depending on a specific social situation (working with a partner in a group, talking with a person of a higher social status, ordering food in a cafe and the like).
- The next, no less important problem of sociolinguistics is the "language and nation." Studying this problem, scientists turn to such a concept as a national language, that is, the civil language of a certain nation.
- On the territory of one state, in addition to the state language approved in the Constitution, there are various dialects, functional styles, regional koines and so on. They serve the process of communication between different social groups of people in different situations. Sociolinguists study the problem of the relationship between all variants of one language in a particular state.
- Social aspects of multilingualism (knowledge and use of at least one foreign language) and diglossia (situation when there are several official languages on the same territory). When studying this problem, scientists consider which categories of the population are multilingual. In the case of diglosia, which languages are used in which social group of the population.
- The problem of verbal communication. When studying it, sociolinguists observe the communication of people belonging to different or to one social group.
- The problem of language policy. What measures does the state take to solve linguistic problems in society?
- A problem of a more global scale is language conflicts. Sociolinguists, on the basis of research, are trying to neutralize existing language conflicts between countries, or to prevent possible ones.
- The problem of endangered languages.
As you can see, sociolinguistics is a wide range of problems, but all of them are associated with the manifestation of language in society.
Communication with other scientific disciplines
The entire list of problems studied by sociolinguistics is intertwined with other scientific disciplines. Namely:
- Sociology. Provides information on the social structure of society, on the systematization of status and non-status groups of people, the relations between groups and within them.
- Communication theory.
- Dialectology. This scientific discipline studies the change of language depending on the territory of the speaker or his social status.
- Phonetics. Specialists in this field are studying the phonetic (sound) structure of the language. The connection with phonetics is quite strong, since in most sociolinguistic theories the basis is phonetic material.
- The strongest interweaving of sociolinguistics and linguistics. Here, aspects such as lexicology and semantics of words are important.
- Psycholinguistics. For sociolinguistics, the data obtained by psycholinguists is important, since they study the speech activity of a person from the side of mental processes.
- Ethnolinguistics. The list of problems of this scientific discipline also includes the problem of bilingualism and multilingualism.
Object of sociolinguistics
Sociolinguistics, like many other humanities, studies the language. But the attention of this scientific discipline is directed not at the internal structure of the language (grammatical, phonetic, etc.), but at functioning in a real society. Sociolinguists study how real people talk in certain situations, then they analyze their speech behavior.
Subject
The subject of sociolinguistics is understood in several generally accepted senses.
- Language and society. This is an understanding of the subject of sociolinguistics in the broadest sense. By this is meant any relationship between language and society. For example, language and culture, and ethnos, and history, and school.
- The narrowest concept of the subject of sociolinguistics means the study of the choice of the speaker, one or another language element, that is, which language unit the subject chooses.
- Studying the features of linguistic behavior depending on a person’s membership in a social group. This is an analysis of the social structure of society, but in addition to the well-known sociological criteria (social status, age, education, and so on), features of the choice of language units are added. For example, people of low social status speak a certain word in one way, and people of high - in another.
Methods of Sociolinguistics
Methods are conditionally divided into three groups. The first includes the collection of research material, the second - processing the collected material, and the third - evaluating the information received. Moreover, the obtained and processed material needs a sociolinguistic interpretation. It will allow scientists to identify a possible pattern between language and social groups of people.
A sociolinguist puts forward a hypothesis. Then, using these methods, refutes or confirms it.
Information Collection Methods
Basically, they use methods that were borrowed by sociolinguistics from sociology, psychology and dialectology. The most commonly used methods are listed below.
Questioning. Presented as a list of questions to which the respondent answers. The questionnaire has several types.
- Individual. It does not provide for a common time and place for answers to questionnaire questions.
- Group In this form, a group of people answers questionnaire questions at one time in one place.
- Full-time. The survey is conducted under the supervision of a researcher.
- Correspondence. The respondent (responder) fills out the questionnaire independently.
- Questionnaire. It is a questionnaire with a dozen questions of the same type. They are mainly used to detect linguistic variation. The questions used in the questionnaire can be presented in several forms:
- Closed. Those to which possible answers are assigned in advance. The data collected in this way is not completely complete. Since the possible answers may not fully satisfy the respondent.
- Control. When compiling control questions, the only correct option is assumed.
- Open. With this form, the respondent chooses the form and content of the answer.
Observation. With this method of collecting information, a sociolinguist observes a specific group of people or a single individual. The features of the observable speech behavior are taken into account. It is of two types:
- Hidden. Performed by an incognito researcher. At the same time, the observables do not know that they are objects of research.
- Included. The observer himself becomes a member of the study group.
Interviewing. This is a way of gathering information in which there is a purposeful conversation between the researcher and the interviewee. It is of two types:
- Bulk With this type of interviewing, a large number of respondents are interviewed.
- Specialized. With this type, a survey is conducted of a group that has certain features. For example, mentally ill, prisoners, illiterate adults and so on.
Processing and evaluation of the material received
After collecting the necessary materials, they are processed. To do this, all data is entered into the table and subjected to manual go mechanized processing. The choice of calculating the result depends on the amount of data.
After that, a mathematical and statistical evaluation of the obtained material is used. Then the researcher, based on the results obtained, reveals a certain pattern, how the use of the language is correlated with the social characteristics of the representatives of this language group. In addition, the researcher can make a forecast about how the situation will develop in the future.
Sociolinguistics
Two types of sociolinguistics are distinguished depending on the phenomena studied. Synchronous is the direction of all scientists' attention to the study of the relationship between language and social institutions. And in the case of diachronic sociolinguistics, the main focus is on processes that can characterize the development of a language. Moreover, linguistic development goes along with the evolution of society.
Depending on the scale of the goals pursued by the scientist and the objects studied, the scientific discipline is divided into macro-sociolinguistics and microsociolinguistics. The first deals with the study of linguistic relations and processes that occur in large social associations. These may be the state, region, numerous social groups. The latter, as a rule, are allocated conditionally for any specific attribute. For example, age, level of education, social status and so on.
Microsociolinguistics is engaged in the study and analysis of linguistic processes occurring in a small social group. For example, family, class, work collective, and so on. At the same time, the methods of sociolinguistics remain the same.
Depending on the nature of the study, theoretical and experimental sociolinguistics are distinguished. If sociolinguistic studies are aimed at developing common problems that are associated with the principle of "language and society", then they relate to theoretical sociolinguistics. If the scientist's attention is directed to the experimental verification of the hypothesis put forward, then these data are referred to as experimental.
Experimental research in sociolinguistics is a rather time-consuming task. It requires a lot of effort in organizing and financing. The research scientist sets himself the task of collecting as much accurate data as possible on the speech behavior of representatives of a social group or on other aspects of the life of the linguistic community. Moreover, the data should characterize as much as possible different aspects of the life of a social group. Based on this, the scientist needs to use reliable tools, more than once tested the experimental technique. In addition to technology, well-trained interviewers are also required to fulfill the required conditions exactly. An equally important role is played by the choice of a population of people. There are several types of samples.
- Representative In this case, a small group of typical representatives of the whole community is selected. At the same time, the percentage and significant characteristics should be reflected in this small group. Thus, a small model of the whole society is created.
- Random. With this sample, respondents are randomly selected. The downside is that the data obtained in this way cannot accurately convey linguistic variation in different social groups.
- Systematic. The people studied are selected according to certain rules or criteria established by a sociolinguist.
What affects the change in the individual's language
As you can see, sociolinguistics and language are strongly interconnected. To date, sociolinguists identify a number of factors that directly affect the individual's speech behavior.
- Profession and environment that surrounds a person. All this has its effect on the way of thinking and their presentation.
- Level and nature of education. After the research among the technical and humanitarian intelligentsia, it was revealed that the first group is prone to using jargon. While the humanitarian intelligentsia is conservative in its speech behavior, it is increasingly observing the literary norms of the language.
- Floor. According to experiments, women are conservative in their speech behavior, while the speech behavior of a man acts as innovative.
- Ethnicity. Ethnic groups are people who speak a non-state language, and, accordingly, exist in a situation of bilingualism. In this case, the language can be enriched, transformed.
- Territorial residence of an individual. The territory of a person's life affects his dialectal features. For example, people living in the southern part of Russia are characterized by "haggling", but for Russians living in the northern part of the country, "hitching" is typical.
So, we examined the concept of sociolinguistics.