Language and Sex

Language and Sex: Gender Pattern

Language: Is a tool of communication

Gender: Is a range of characteristic used to distinguish between male and females, particularly in the case of men and woman and the masculine and feminine attributes assigned to them.

Language and Gender: itself is an area of study within sociolinguistics, applied linguistics and related fields that investigates varieties of speech associated with a particular gender or social norms for such gendered language use.

The gender pattern is a typical sociolinguistic pattern, a characteristic type of sex-graded linguistic variation. It results from the occurrence of a particular linguistic variable with the non-linguistic variable of sex and gender-the biologically defined distinction between females and males and the social distinction between feminine and masculine. The gender pattern describes phonological differences in overall female and male speech behaviour

A formulation of the gender pattern:

There is a relationship between the biological and social sex gender of a speaker and the use of a particular phonological variant in the form that:

1. In stable variables women use more standard variants (prestige variants, socially acceptance variants) than man of the same social class and age under the same circumstances.

2. In stables variables men use more non-standard variants (non-prestige variants, socially less favoured variants) that woman of the same social class and age under the same circumstances.

According to Meyerhoff (2006) a variable can be considered stable if there is no evidence that one of it variants is the preferred variant and is pushing out the other one. (ng) is a typical case of a stable variable which is not undergoing change with regard the use of its velar and alveolar nasal variants.

Dialogues and Styles of Speech

A man talk to man: 
Let's get hammered (short, vulgar, NOT impolite)
I don't like this topic at all. (formal behaviour, audience, statement)
He was a hell of a man. (talking about s.o, compliment)

A woman talk to a woman:
Let's meet for a make up party next Saturday. (informative, polite)
Do you mind if we change the topic. (formal behaviour, audience, politeness)
The guy I met in the elevator had a very bad attitude. (honest, polite, bad experience)

A man talk to a woman:
Would you like to have another drink? (polite, playing a role, thinking of own interest)
We will discuss the topic tomorrow if you don't mind (politeness, formally, audience)
He is a very strange person (covering own antipathy with politeness)

A woman talk to man:
You should hurry up honey. (indicating time pressure polite, hidden information)
I will announce my decision tomorrow at 2 pm. (formal, audience, informative)
It was an interesting experience to meet him. (polite, description of bad experience, hiding emotion)

Culture, Grammar and Word

PRONOUNS
                               Male              Female

English                   He                 She
French                    Il                   Elle
Thai                        Phom            Chan/dichan
Japanese                 Boku             Atashi


References Link:
http://www.slideshare.net/dewynoviienz/language-and-sex?next_slideshow=1
http://www.ello.uos.de/field.php/Sociolinguistics/Genderpattern

Language and Culture

LANGUAGE AND CULTURE

It is generally agreed that language and culture are closely related. Language can be viewed as a verbal expression of culture. It is used to maintain and convey culture and cultural ties. Language provides us with many of the categories we use for expression of our thoughts, so it is therefore natural to assume that our thinking is influenced by the language which we use. The values and customs in the country we grow up in shape the way in which we think to a certain extent.

Cultures hiding in languages, examines the link between Japanese language and culture. An Insight into Korean Culture through the Korean Language discusses how Korean culture influences the language.

Languages spoken in Ireland, focuses on the status of the Irish language nowadays and how it has changed over time. In our big world every minute is a lesson looks at intercultural communication and examines how it can affect interactions between people from countries and backgrounds.

Ability to create and use language is the most distinctive feature of humans, Humans learn their culture through language, Culture is transmitted through language.

Moribund—spoken only by a few older people and unknown to children, Perhaps as many as 90% of all world languages will be extinct or moribund within the next 100 years, An entire way of thinking is lost each time a language becomes extinct.

Regulatory Language

Using language to control the behaviour of others or getting them to do what we want them to do, May include giving orders or at more subtle levels manipulating and controlling others, Positive regulatory language is “life skills” of parents, management and administrator must know.

Interactional Language

Used to establish and define social relationships and language all of us use in group situation, “small talk”, negotiations, encouragement, expression of friendship are examples, because those who are effective in building social skills are likely to succeed, children need to develop need to develop awareness of the ability to use language to establish relationships.Work cooperatively, enjoy companionship

Personal Language

Used to express individuality and personality, strong feelings and opinions are a part of personal language, often neglected in classrooms and thought inappropriate, yet through personal language that students relate their own lives to the subject matter being taught establish their own identities, build self esteem and confidence.

Imaginative Language

Used to create a world of one’s own, to express fantasy through dramatic play, drama, poetry or stories, unless it is fostered, it will rapidly disappear in later years. Its importance cannot be underestimated,  how difficult some teachers find it to get students to write with imagination.

Heuristic Language

Used to explore, to investigate, to acquire knowledge, to do research, to acquire understanding, it is the language for wondering, for figuring things out, inquiry is its most important function.

CULTURAL ETHICS

Culturalists embrace the idea that moral doctrines are just the rules a community believes, and they accept that there’s no way to prove one society’s values better than another. Culturalists don’t, however, follow Nietzsche in taking that as a reason to turn away from all traditional moral regulation; instead, it’s a reason to accept and endorse whichever guidelines are currently in effect wherever you happen to be. The old adage, “when in Rome, do as the Romans do,” isn’t too far from where we’re at here.

Culturalists see moral rules as fixed onto specific societies, but that doesn’t help anyone know what to do when confronted with an unfamiliar set of beliefs. How, the really important question is, does a culturalist act when forced to make decisions in a place and among people whose beliefs are different and unfamiliar? The Entrepreneur interview with Steve Veltkamp provides one answer.

"What can you do if your overseas associate demands a bribe? Veltkamp doesn't recommend asking embassies or consulates for assistance, as “they have to stick to the official line.” Instead, he believes “the best resource in almost every country of the world is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, where you can find Americans who live in the country and understand how things are done.” (Moira Allen, 2011)

Most traditional ethical theories go in exactly the opposite direction. They say that it doesn’t necessarily matter what people are actually doing. Stronger, the entire point of studying ethics has normally been to escape conventional wisdom and ingrained habits; the idea of doing what we ought to do requires a step away from those things and a cold, rational look at the situation. So, a morality based on duties sets up guidelines including don’t lie, don’t steal and appeals to men and women in business to follow them. Acting in an ethically responsible way in the world means obeying the dictates and refusing to be swayed by what the guy in the next cubicle is up to. Handing someone money under the table, consequently, while publicly insisting that everything’s on the up and up can’t be condoned no matter what anyone else does; it can’t be right because it entails at least implicit lying. Conclusion. The culturalist deals with the question about whether a bribe is ethically respectable by ignoring all dictates received from other places and obeying the customs and standard practices of those who live and work where the decision is being made.

References Link:

http://catalog.flatworldknowledge.com/bookhub/reader/1695?e=brusseau-ch04_s03

https://www1.udel.edu/anthro/budani/Culture%20and%20Language.pdf

http://www.lexiophiles.com/uncategorized/the-relationship-between-language-and-culture

Language Change (Phonology, Morphology, Syntax, Semantics)

         Any treatment of linguistics must address the question of language change. The way languages change offers insights into the nature of language itself. The possible answers to why languages change tell us about the way language is used in society, about how it is acquired by individuals and may reveal to us information about its internal organisation. There is no simple explanation for why languages change. This is an area in which there is much speculation and little proof. The area is an interesting and fruitful one but there are few if any direct answers. For this reason historical linguistics has traditionally been concerned with how languages evolve and not why they do so in one particular direction and not in another. To begin this section a number of statements about language change are be made.

1) All languages change There is no such thing as a language which is not changing. The rate of change may vary considerably due to both internal and external factors (see below). English, for example, has changed greatly since Old English. Other languages, like Finnish and Icelandic, have changed little over the centuries. 

2) Language change is largely regular One can recognise regularities in the types of change which languages undergo, even if these cannot be predicted.

A. PHONOLOGY

Phonology is a branch of linguistics concerned with the systematic organisation of sounds in language.

Epenthesis Vowel is a low-level phonetic rule which is used to break up clusters of consonants which are unacceptable in a certain language or variety. There are instances from the varieties of English where a prohibition on sequences of two sonorants in a syllable coda is resolved by vowel epenthesis which leads to re-syllabification (the syllable boundary is indicated by a dot in the following). 

film /film/        -         [fi.lqm]           (Irish English) 
 arm /arm/        -         [a.rqm] 

Consonant epenthesis is different in its motivation. It arises in order to provide a more consonantal syllable coda. There are some words in English which originally ended in an alveolar nasal or an /s/ and which developed an epenthetic stop after the final segment. The result is that the syllable rhyme of such words shows a steady decrease in sonority from the nucleus to the right edge. Examples can be found from the history of English.

High sonority                                     -                    Low sonority 
vowel                                      nasal/fricative          stop 
sound (< French son)           against (< againes) 

Metathesis This phenomenon involves the reversal of linear order with two segments. It most commonly occurs with a vowel and /r/ and is attested widely across many languages.

bridde                           bird                         (Middle English and Modern English)  
modern                         [m>drqn]                (Modern English and Irish English) 
brennen                         burn                        (German and English) 

B. MORPHOLOGY

In linguistics, morphology /mɔːˈfɒlədʒi/ is the identification, analysis and description of the structure of a given language's morphemes and other linguistic units, such as root words, affixes, parts of speech, intonations and stresses, or implied context. In contrast, morphological typology is the classification of languages according to their use of morphemes, while lexicology is the study of those words forming a language's word-stock.

Second person pronouns in English In Old and Middle English there are singular pronouns for the second person – thou /3u:/ (later /3au/) and thee /3e:/ (later /3i:/) – which have long since disappeared from mainstream varieties of English except in religious usage. The survival of you as the only second person pronoun is somewhat surprising as this was previously an oblique form. The original distribution of pronominal forms is given in the following table.

                           Singular                Plural
Nom.                  thou                      ye 
Acc./Dat            thee                       you         -       sole surviving form in 
                                                                               mainstream varieties

Unrecognised morphology In a language contact situation it may happen that speakers of the receiving language fail to recognise the morphological structure of a borrowed word. This has happened with a small group of Scandinavian verbs which were borrowed in the north of England in the late Old English period. Here the reflexive pronominal suffix -sk was not recognised by the English and the reflexive verbs were treated as monomorphemic non-reflexive verbs. An example is Old Norse batha-sk which appears as Middle English bask ‘to bathe in sunlight’; another case is be the northern verb busk ‘prepare, get dressed, hurry’ from Old Norse bua-sk.

Morphological misinterpretation This is, in a way, the reverse of the previous phenomenon. It can be seen clearly with some French loanwords in Middle English where the final /s/ was misinterpreted as a plural suffix (as in English) and removed for the singular form of the loan. An example is Old French cerise which turns up in Middle English as cherry without the final /s/ (in the singular). The word pea is a similar case: the Old English word pise (plural pisan) was misinterpreted as a plural and the final /-s/ was removed.

C. SYNTAX

Syntax is a set of rules in a language. It dictates how words from different parts of speech are put together in order to convey a complete thought.

The general word order of an English sentence is “Subject+Verb+Object”. In poetry, however, the word order may be shifted to achieve certain artistic effects such as producing rhythm or melody in the lines, achieving emphasis, heightening connection between two words etc. The unique syntax used in poetry makes it different from prose. Let us consider the following examples of syntax:

Example #1

In casual conversations, we can simply say, “I cannot go out” to convey our inability to go out. P J Kavanagh’s in his poem Beyond Decoration does not rely on merely stating a prosaic “I cannot go out”. Rather, he shifts the syntax and says “Go out I cannot”, which lays a much stronger emphasis on the inability to go out conveyed by the word “cannot”.

Example #2

Similarly, Milton shifts words in his poems frequently. Let us analyze lines from his poem Lycidas:

“Thee, Shepherd, thee the woods and desert caves, And all their echoes mourn” 

D. SEMANTICS

Semantics means the meaning and interpretation of words, signs, and sentence structure. Semantics largely determine our reading comprehension, how we understand others, and even what decisions we make as a result of our interpretations. Semantics can also refer to the branch of study within linguistics that deals with language and how we understand meaning. This has been a particularly interesting field for philosophers as they debate the essence of meaning, how we build meaning, how we share meaning with others, and how meaning changes over time.

Example:

One of the central issues with semantics is the distinction between literal meaning and figurative meaning. With literal meaning, we take concepts at face value. For example, if we said, 'Fall began with the turning of the leaves,' we would mean that the season began to change when the leaves turned colors. Figurative meaning utilizes similes and metaphors to represent meaning and convey greater emotion. For example, 'I'm as hungry as a bear' would be a simile and a comparison to show a great need for sustenance.

Let's look at the context of the Shakespearean quote we mentioned earlier:

'Juliet: O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?

Deny thy father and refuse thy name;

Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,

And I'll no longer be a Capulet.

Romeo: (Aside) Shall I hear more, or shall I speak at this?

Juliet: 'Tis but thy name that is my enemy;

Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.

What's Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot,

Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part

Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!

What's in a name? That which we call a rose

By any other name would smell as sweet;

So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd,

Retain that dear perfection which he owes

Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,

And for that name which is no part of thee

Take all myself.'

The quote: 'That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet,' is actually an example of figurative meaning when we look at the context, the surrounding text that clarifies meaning. Romeo and Juliet's families, the Montagues and the Capulets, were in a notoriously hideous feud, hence the couple's characterization as star-crossed lovers. Juliet uses this metaphor to make the argument to Romeo that his name (his family) does not matter to her, she wants Romeo for himself. Juliet's dialogue about their family would be an example of literary meaning.

References Link:

http://study.com/academy/lesson/what-is-semantics-definition-examples-quiz.html

http://literarydevices.net/syntax/

https://www.uni-due.de/ELE/LanguageChange.pdf

Speech Community (Network, Intersecting Communities, Repertoires)

A. SPEECH COMMUNITY

Speech Community is hard to define it because there is not a true definition of it.

A community is a group of people with a shared set of activities, practices, beliefs, and social structures, meanwhile a speech community is a group of people who share similar ideas, uses, and norms of language. The kind of group that sociolinguist attempt to study is called speech. 

B. INTERSECTING COMMUNITIES

Each person speaks their own "typical" way according to its place of origin or specific speech community. Rosen Claims that cities cannot be thought of as a linguistic patchwork maps, ghetto because: 

1. Languages and dialects have no simple geographical distribution and

2. Because interaction between them blurs whatever boundaries might be drawn.

Dialects and languages are beginning to influence each other, for example London is a community in some sences but not in others. Neither a single speech community even though it has 300 languages or more, its too big and fragmented. It is to difficult to relate of speech community directly to language or languages spoken.

The concept of SC is less useful than what is expected and we should be instead referring to group as any set of individuals united for a common end. A person can belong to many different groups at any given time depending on the particular ends in view. Ex: Laura is living in Gotemborg Sweden, married to a Swedish man, she and her husband speak mostly English and Swedish switching and mixing both from time to time, she had to learn Swedish with an intense course  in Sweden, she is an immigrant from Costa Rica, she has an accent, she doesn't speak Swedish that well, she uses Swedish in the hospital, as well as English switching from time to time and from one group to another.

Each member of a community has a repertoire of social identities that are each one in a given context is associated with a number of nonverbal and verbal forms of expression. There is not a clear way on how to define how individuals can classify themselves and speaker are creating and recreating social identities. So, it is impossible to predict the group or community he or she will consider itself to belong in a particular moment. This group will change according to situation.

C. NETWORKING AND REPERTOIRES

Intensity of various relationship frequency/interactions:

Dense network: People you know and interact also know and interact with one another.

Multiplex: Tied together in a network 

Strong social cohesion

Feelings of solidarity

Encouragement to identify with others

OPEN and CLOSED networks: Its linguistic effect is intimately related to the type of community (small town or large city, Southern or Northern)

Open Network: A network which provide open access to its users. Information is often new and of importance, a (serious) blogger and visitor of blog.

Closed Network: Mostly strong ties. Information that flows in those networks tends to be redundant and inefficient. Facebook,

Speech Repertoires

Verbal repertoire: The totality of linguistic forms employed in a socially significant interaction. (Vocabulary, grammar)

Speech Repertoire: Linguistic Varieties used by a speech community.

        It is important to remember that group is a relative concept with respect to speach community. Also that an individual belongs to various speech communities, at the same time, but he/she will identify with only one of them. there are many definitions for speech communities which are all different: too simple or to complex.

References Link:

https://prezi.com/3tq5ytlm60fg/speech-communities-intersecting-communities-networks-and/

Code (Diglossia, Bilingual, Multilingual, Code-switching & Mixing)

A. DIGLOSSIA

Diglossia ( /daɪˈɡlɒsiə/; two languages) refers to a situation in which two dialects or languages are used by a single language community. In addition to the community's every day or vernacular language variety (labelled "L" or "low" variety), a second, highly codified variety (labelled "H" or "high") is used in certain situations such as literature, formal education, or other specific settings, but not used for ordinary conversation.

B. BILINGUAL AND MULTILINGUAL

The simple definition of Bilingual is who are able to speak and understand two languages while multilingual is people who speak more than one language - sometimes use elements of multiple languages in conversing with each other.

Bilingualism generally refers to the existence of more than one language in an individual or a community. Bilingualism in a broad meaning constitutes the most common condition on both the personal level and the society level: the real exception is rather monolingualism. More specifically, bilingualism refers to both the broader and more general concept of the knowledge and usage of two languages, and the more specific concept of linguistic inventory (better defined as social bilingualism) formed by two languages, which stands opposite to diglossia. Diglossia is therefore a particular form of bilingualism in which the two available languages are related in a hierarchical and complementary way.

Multilingualism is the use of two or more languages, either by an individual speaker or by a community of speakers. Multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population. Multilingualism is becoming a social phenomenon governed by the needs of globalization and cultural openness. Owing to the ease of access to information facilitated by the Internet, individuals' exposure to multiple languages is becoming increasingly frequent, thereby promoting a need to acquire additional languages. People who speak several languages are also called polyglots. As far as learning a language, multilingual speakers have acquired and maintained at least one language during childhood, the so-called first language (L1). The first language (sometimes also referred to as the mother tongue) is acquired without formal education, by mechanisms heavily disputed. Children acquiring two languages in this way are called simultaneous bilinguals. Even in the case of simultaneous bilinguals, one language usually dominates over the other. People who know more than one language have been reported to be more adept at language learning compared to monolinguals. Additionally, bilinguals often have important economic benefits over monolingual individuals as bilingual people are able to carry out duties that monolinguals cannot, such as interacting with customers who only speak a minority language.

Multilingualism in computing can be considered part of a continuum between internationalization and localisation. Due to the status of English in computing, software development nearly always uses it (but see also Non-English-based programming languages), so almost all commercial software is initially available in an English version, and multilingual versions, if any, may be produced as alternative options based on the English original.

C. CODE-SWITCHING AND MIXING

Code-switching is the concurrent use of more than one language, or language variety, in conversation. Code-switching is the use of more than one linguistic variety in a manner consistent with the syntax and phonology of each variety. In linguistics, code-switching occurs when a speaker alternates between two or more languages, or language varieties, in the context of a single conversation. Multilinguals, speakers of more than one language, sometimes use elements of multiple languages when conversing with each other. Thus, code-switching is the use of more than one linguistic variety in a manner consistent with the syntax and phonology of each variety.

Code mixing is a thematically related term, but the usage of the terms code-switching and code-mixing varies. Some scholars use either term to denote the same practice, while others apply code-mixing to denote the formal linguistic properties of said language-contact phenomena, and code-switching to denote the actual, spoken usages by multilingual persons. 

Pidgin, Creole, Lingua Franca

      Throughout the course of geographic history, exploration and trade have caused various populations of people to come into contact with each other. Because these people were of different cultures and thus spoke different languages, communication was often difficult. Over the decades though, languages changed to reflect such interactions and groups sometimes developed lingua francas and pidgins.

A. PIDGIN

A pidgin language is a lingua franca which has no native speakers. Whereas most vernaculars (Ethnicity language) have a history and heritage like a nation or people, in a family of languages, a pidgin is spoken among speakers of different languages who need a common language to communicate.  But then so is a world or regional language.

A pidgin develops where there is a predominance of non-native speakers using that language among themselves, who speak the language in a manner determined by their mother tongues, limiting intelligibility with native speakers of the "inter-language." A pidgin is a simplified version of one language that combines the vocabulary of a number of different languages.

Pidgins are often just used between members of different cultures to communicate for things like trade. A pidgin is distinct from a lingua franca in that members of the same populations rarely use it to talk to one another. It is also important to note that because pidgins develop out of sporadic contact between people and is a simplification of different languages, pidgins generally have no native speakers.

There are several pidgins of Swahili in East Africa.  Speakers of standard Swahili can sometimes understand the pidgin speakers, but pidgin speakers (who call their language Swahili also) often cannot understand the standard speaker.

B. LINGUA FRANCA

A lingua franca is a language used by different populations to communicate when they do not share a common language.. The term "lingua franca" classifies a speech form by its function.  Such a language is similar to a pidgin, in that it is used as an interlanguage, often without any predominant native-speaker community to serve as a "standard" referent.  However, it is often a variety of a vernacular language, whose standard referent is a native-speaker community in another locale.

Generally, a lingua franca is a third language that is distinct from the native language of both parties involved in the communication. Sometimes as the language becomes more widespread, the native populations of an area will speak the lingua franca to each other as well.

This is the case with "English" in Kenya.  It has some "nonstandard" features, which can clearly be accounted for by features or usages in the local languages, but it remains clearly only a variant of the standard language stream.  Swahili also fits this description.  Nonnative speakers outnumber native speakers by about 400 to 1. Yet the preferred reference form of Swahili is the language as spoken by a native Swahili community, supported by a large literature.  Learning Swahili certainly puts the foreigner closer to the African, but how close compared with the vernaculars in the home?

Other lingua francas used in Africa are Lingala, varieties of Bobo and varieties of Fulani in various countries.  Various Arabic languages also serve as lingua francas in certain regions.

C. CREOLE

Creole languages are pidgins that have acquired native speakers. When a form of pidgin becomes the home language of a second generation, it is called a creole.  It takes on the social character of an ethnic language, and may become a vernacular.  This often occurs in urban settings, so a creole may have a literature and be consciously "developed" by its speakers into a full culture-bearing medium.

It would usually be classified by comparative linguists according to the structural features.  Thus a French creole might be classed as an Atlantic, not an Indo-European, language.  In Nigeria, it appears that "Pidgin" is actually a creole.  We determined that it is a viable social and ministry language after learning a vernacular.  Might it be considered as a first language?



References Link:

http://strategyleader.org/langlearn/pidginscreolesslrk.html
http://geography.about.com/od/culturalgeography/a/linguafranca.htm

Language, Dialect, & Varieties (Regional & Social Dialect, Style and Register)

A. Language  and Varieties

Language is both a system of communication between individuals and a social phenomenon. When two or more people communicate with each other in speech, we can call the system of communication that they employ a code. In most cases that code will be something we may also want to call a language. Language varieties refers to the various forms of language triggered by social factors. Language may changes from region to region, from one social class to another, from individual to individual, and from situation to situation. This actual changes result in the varieties of language.

B. Dialect

A variety of a language spoken by a group of people that is characterised by systematic features (e.g., phonological, lexical, grammatical) that distinguish it from other varieties of that same language.

Idiolect: the speech variety of an individual speaker

a. Language vs Dialect

Linguistic criterion

 Mutual intelligibility

    YES? = dialects

    NO? = languages

e.g., British vs. American vs. Irish vs. Australian (= dialects of English)

Q: Why do dialects exist?

A: Because of isolation or long term separation of groups Isolation can be across time, geography or social barriers.

Two types of “dialects”:

(1) sociolects or “social dialects”: linguistic differentiation based upon on membership in a longstanding socially-isolated or separate group. Social dialect originated from social groups and depend on a variety of factors, social class, religion, and ethnicity. Factors such us occupation, place of residence, education, income, racial or ethnic origin, cultural background, caste, religion related to the way people speak.

example:

• Caste in India often determines which variety of the language a speaker use.
• Christian, Muslim, and Jewish in Baghdad speak different Variety of Arabic.
• Ethnic group in America, e.g Labov's work in NY.
• Speakers of Jewish and Italian ethnicity differentiated from the standard variety or Black English.

(2) regional dialects: linguistic differentiation based upon on membership in a longstanding geographically-isolated or separate group. Dialects that are defined in terms of geographic boundaries, very distinctive local varieties.

• It is reflected in the differences of pronunciation, in the choice and forms of words and syntax.
• There is a dialect continuum.
• Various pressures-political, social, cultural, and educational, serve to harden current national boundaries to make the linguistic differences among states.
• Dialect Geography-term-used to describe attempts made to map the distribution of various linguistic features.

C. Styles and Register

     a. Style

         Style is language variation which reflects changes in situational factors, such as addressee, setting, task or topic. Style is often analysed along a scale of formality, the level of formality is influenced by some factors like the various differences among the participants, topic, emotional involvement, etc. (Janet Holmes, 2001)

Addressee as an Influence on Style

Age of addressee ==> People generally talk to the very young and to the very old. For example: Baby-talk.
Social background of addressee ==> People talk differently to the higher class and to the lower class. For example: The pronunciation of newsreaders on different radio station  (Janet Holmes, 2001).

    b. Register

             Meanwhile, for the terms of Register, Janet Holmes ( 2001: 246) explained that Registers are specific sets of vocabulary items associated with different occupational group or the language of groups of people with common interests or jobs. For example: the language used by air-plane pilots, surgeons, bank managers, jazz fans, commentators, etc.

References Link:

http://englishliteraturecenter.blogspot.co.id/2012/06/language-varieties-in-sociolinguistics.html

http://www.slideshare.net/sarihafizh/language-dialect-and-varieties-31983024

http://faculty.washington.edu/wassink/LING200/lect19_socio1.pdf

Intro to Sociolinguistic

A. What is Sociolinguistic?

Sociolinguistic is the study of the relationship between language and society, of language variation, and of attitudes about language. Any discussion of the relationship between language and society, or of the various functions of language in society, should begin with some attempt to define each of these terms. Let us say that a society is any group of people who are drawn together for a certain purpose or purposes. By such a definition ‘society’ becomes a very comprehensive concept, but we will soon see how useful such a comprehensive view is because of the very different kinds of societies we must consider in the course of the various discussions that follow. We may attempt an equally comprehensive definition of language: a language is what the members of a particular society speak. However, as we will see, speech in almost any society can take many very different forms, and just what forms we should choose to discuss when we attempt to describe the language of a society may prove to be a contentious matter. Sometimes too a society may be plurilingual; that is, many speakers may use more than one language, however we define language. We should also note that our definitions of language and society are not independent: the definition of language includes in it a reference to society.

a. Language

Language is both a system of communication between individuals and a social phenomenon. When two or more people communicate with each other in speech, we can call the system of communication that they employ a code. In most cases that code will be something we may also want to call a language.

b. Variation

A variety is a set of linguistic forms used under specific social circumstances, with a distinctive social distribution. When we look closely at any language, we will discover time and time again that there is considerable internal variation and that speakers make constant use of the many different possibilities offered to them. No one speaks the same way all the time and people constantly exploit the nuances of the languages they speak for a wide variety of purposes.

No two speakers of a language speak exactly the same way, ex: Between group variation = inter-group variation. No individual speaker speaks the same way all the time, ex: Within-speaker variation = intraspeaker variation.

c. Society

The area of language and society – sociolinguistics – is intended to show how our use of language is governed by such factors as class, gender, race, etc. A subsection of this area is anthropological linguistics which is concerned with form and use of language in different cultures and to what extent the development of language has been influenced by cultural environment.

d. Linguistic

Human language, that unique characteristic of our species, has been of interest throughout history. The scientific study of human language is called linguistics. A linguist, then, is not someone who speaks many languages (although many linguists do); such individuals are polyglots. A linguist is a scientist who investigates human language in all its facets, its structure, its use, its history, its place in society.

The form and structure of the kinds of linguistic knowledge speakers possess is the concern of theoretical linguistics. This theory of grammar – the mental representation of linguistic knowledge – is what this textbook is about. But the field of linguistics is not limited to grammatical theory; it includes a large number of subfields, which is true of most sciences concerned with phenomena as complex as human language.

references link:
http://home.lu.lv/~pva/Sociolingvistika/1006648_82038_wardhaugh_r_an_introduction_to_sociolinguistics.pdf
http://faculty.washington.edu/wassink/LING200/lect19_socio1.pdf
https://abudira.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/full_summary_an_introduction_to_sociolinguistics.pdf
https://www.uni-due.de/ELE/LanguageAndSociety.pdf

http://www.phil.uu.nl/~mariekes/it08/Fromkin.pdf