sociolinguistics

sociolinguistics

a field of study, informed by both sociology and psychology, concerned with the social and cultural aspects and functions of LANGUAGE. Although sometimes narrowly identified with somewhat disparate, albeit important, topics such as language and social class (e.g. the work of Basil BERNSTEIN), language and ethnicity (e.g. Labov, 1967), language and gender, etc., potentially at least, sociolinguistics, has a much wider brief, including most aspects of language. One general area of major significance, for example, has been an emphasis on the importance of a sociological view of’linguistic competence’ and the inadequacy of a merely physiological and psychological view (e.g. Halliday's or HABERMAS's critique of CHOMSKY's theory of linguistic competence). Among further main areas of sociolinguistic concern are PRAGMATICS and SEMIOTICS. Accordingly, the argument can be advanced that sociolinguistics should be regarded as having an utterly central rather than a peripheral role within the general study of LINGUISTICS. see also COGNITIVE ANTHROPOLOGY.

Collins Dictionary of Sociology, 3rd ed. © HarperCollins Publishers 2000

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Sociolinguistics

 

(sociological linguistics), a scientific discipline based on linguistics, sociology, social psychology, and cultural anthropology and studying a broad range of problems associated with the social nature of language, the social functions of language, and the way in which social factors influence language.

The foundations of modern sociolinguistic research were laid by L. P. Iakubinskii, V. V. Vinogradov, B. A. Larin, V. M. Zhirmunskii, R. O. Shor, M. V. Sergievskii, E. D. Polivanov, and other Soviet scholars who, in the 1920’s and 1930’s, studied language as a social phenomenon. Contributions to the development of sociolinguistics were also made by the French school of sociological linguistics, which was based on the work of A. Meillet; the American ethnolinguists and sociolinguists who developed the ideas of F. Boas and E. Sapir; German scholars, especially T. Frings and the Leipzig school he founded; V. Mathesius, B. Havranek, and other representatives of the Prague school; and the Japanese school of “linguistic life.”

Unlike some schools of sociolinguistics in the USA and elsewhere, which are oriented toward behaviorism, phenomenology, G. Mead’s theory of social interaction, and other currents of bourgeois philosophy and sociology, Marxist sociolinguistics is based on historical materialism and specific theories of Marxist sociology, including the theory of the social structure of society, the theory of social systems, and the sociology of the personality. It is also based on the study of language as the most important means of human communication, the study of the role of language in the formation and development of nations, and the study of the social functions of languages and dialects.

Sociolinguistics investigates the relationship between language and a nation and studies the national language as a historical category associated with the formation of a nation. It examines the social differentiation of language on all levels of structure and, in particular, the nature of the interrelationships between linguistic and social structures. It is also concerned with the typology of linguistic situations in which the various languages and dialects used by a given group have different social functions. In addition, it studies the principles according to which languages interact under various social conditions; the social aspects of bilingualism, multilingualism, and diglossia (the interaction of different subsystems within the same language that are used in different social contexts); speech in the context of a social situation; and language policy as one of the forms of a society’s conscious influence on language.

The methods of sociolinguistics are a synthesis of linguistic and sociological research methods. Sociolinguistics makes use of questionnaires, interviews, observation in which the observer himself functions as a participant in the act of communication, sociological experimentation, and certain methods of mathematical statistics. It also employs modeling of socially determined speech by means of “sociolinguistic rules”—socially conditioned rules for the generation of utterances, variation, and joint occurrence of linguistic units—and analysis based on the correlation of linguistic and social phenomena as dependent and independent variables.

REFERENCES

Desheriev, lu. D. Zakonomernosti razvitiia i vzaimodeistviia iazykov v sovetskom obshchestve. Moscow, 1966.
lazykiobshchestvo. Moscow, 1968.
Voprosysotsial’noilingvistiki. Leningrad, 1969.
Zakonomernosti razvitiia literaturnykh iazykov narodov SSSR v sovetskuiu epokhu, vols. 1-3. Moscow, 1969-73.
Shveitser, A. D. Voprosy sotsiologii iazyka v sovremennoi amerikanskoi lingvistike. Leningrad, 1971.
Problemy dvuiazychiia i mnogoiazychiia. Moscow, 1972.
Baziev, A. T., and M. I. Isaev. lazykinatsiia. Moscow, 1973.
Sotsiolingvisticheskie problemy razvivaiushchikhsia stran. Moscow, 1975.
Novoe v lingvistike, issue 7. Moscow, 1975. (Translated from English.)
Directions in Sociolinguistics. New York, 1972.
Labov, W. Sociolinguistic Patterns. Philadelphia, 1972.

A. D. SHVEITSER

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.