SOCIOLINGUISTICS
UNIT 2
TRƯƠNG VĂN ÁNH
TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC SÀI GÒN
UNIT 2: SOCIOLINGUISTICS AND LANGUAGE VARIATION
I. INTRODUCTION
There are over 7,000 languages in the world and in a country there are many languages. For example, people of different ethnic groups speak at least 54 languages in Vietnam. However, besides the official language in each group, people in different places or even in one location may use varieties that contain many different accents, registers, etc.





Varieties that are kinds of linguistic bias appropriate for societies are classified into the sign, the written and the spoken that are applied in various ways. Linguists should distinguish the difference of a spoken variety and a written variety and the notion of sociolinguistic variation in language use in each region when they study its sociolinguistics. In particular, we should study all languages and their varieties spoken and written in our environment to discover the relationships and to comprehend the context completely.







II. GENERAL OVERVIEW
Described in books and articles on morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics or discourse analysis, language is often regarded as a uniform entity. Many significant varieties, however, even within one language community, such as country, state or region, can be seen. Linguists have also investigated such regional variation of languages in their studies.







In their limited research, linguists can observe and study several of these varieties, but not all of them. The information about the standard variety of a given language should be given in general descriptions of languages focusing on pronunciation, or grammar. The standard language which is frequently the official kind is chosen for such studies. Nowadays, American English is used popularly all over the world as a second language for people of different occupations in contact with other people from other countries.







Mentioning varieties of a language, linguists provide the terms such as accent, dialect, vernacular and diglossia. Accent is studied in pronouncing words characteristic of a group of people, from a particular country, or part of a country. Dialect denotes aspects of pronunciation together with words and syntax slightly different from the standard variety. People may be confused about accent and dialect. Speakers of different dialects of one language understand each other without major difficulties although various dialects of one language possess different grammar rules and vocabulary. Besides, one language user can speak two or more different dialects, or varieties of a language.







In Vietnam, we speak Vietnamese with three clear accents such as northern, central and southern, and the vocabulary in the three regions contains quite different words. Vernacular, a kind of varieties, is a particular language used in a particular region in a country. Finally, diglossia reflects a situation where people can use two or even more languages in their communicative contacts.
Besides varieties used in language communities in different regions in a country, language may be influenced by other major languages in the world among which exist English, Arabic, French, Russian, Spanish and Chinese. These languages are called






lexifiers because their vocabulary may be borrowed in other languages. The borrowing words are used in the native language with the native accents. They are called pidgins. A pidgin, or a contact language, is a mixture of two other languages: the mother tongue and the above mentioned languages due to trading purposes between peoples who do not share a common language. People in countries such as Singapore, the Philippines, India, Cameroon, and South Africa, etc. use English-based pidgins. Pidgins are considered varieties of language which often have limited vocabulary and poor grammar and







people use them only when they cannot use a common language. When more and more people use a pidgin, it will be widened with more vocabulary and grammatical rules, and it will be used in a wider context. People use more pidgin to contact and their children grow up in a context of more pidgin than their mother language. Then the children, the second generation, will acquire pidgin as their native language. The language used fluently by the second generation is called a creole, the next stage of the development for a pidgin







A creole is characterized by easier grammatical features such as avoidance of passive voice, lack of derivational and inflectional affixes and different word order. Some English-based creoles include: Philippino Creole, Singaporean Creole, Hawaiian Creole, and Indian Creole.
Creolization is the process of the development of a pidgin into a creole, which creates more varieties. People use and improve a creole so that one day a creole will be closer to the standard form of a language. Then a creole is regarded as having a higher social prestige.






III. NOTION OF SOCIOLINGUISTIC VARIATION
Different communities in societies use various forms of languages which are called varieties. “Lect” is from a process of word-formation called back-formation which is from dialect, idiolect or sociolect. Integration tends to develop and people are in great need of communicative contacts during which cross-culture and language varieties rise. Vocabulary, phonology, and grammar are gradually changed to meet new contacts and communications. For example, the







Vietnamese vocabulary has borrowed more and more words from other languages, especially French and English. Therefore, there are English and French pidgins used in mixture with Vietnamese in Vietnam nowadays. Especially, the teenagers and the youth in our country have made use of switching language increasingly (Foreign words are added to Vietnamese ones when they speak Vietnamese). English technical terms, jargons and even slangs are popular among young people these days.







The more we integrate into the world, the more varieties, in general, in language develop and language registers, in particular, can be very helpful in translating as well as in translation theory. The concept of a “whole language” is so broad and therefore rather loose because it is not altogether useful for many linguistic purposes, whether descriptive or comparative. Linguists are in need of a scientific classification of sub-language or varieties in the total range of a language.







New varieties, or sub-languages, should be categorized in different ways which include various classes such as idiolects, dialects, registers, styles and modes, as varieties of a living language. According to Pit Coder (1973), new varieties, or sub-languages are classified into dialects, idiolects, and sociolects. In his suggested classification, Quirk (1972) mentions region, education, subject matter, media and attitude as possible bases of language variety in English, in particular. He regarded dialects as varieties from geographical dispersion, and standard and substandard English as varieties in different ranges of education and social position. Any language, when used in a particular case, is under







influence of registers or interferences from other languages. For example, an English sentence spoken in a place may be affected by vocabulary, phonology, prosody and grammar in French or native language of local people.
A language is usually observed in aspects of vocabulary, graphology, phonology, prosody, and grammar which constitute the common core of that language. Besides the common core of the language concerned, linguists also evaluate other aspects such as lexicology,






grammar, and styles of each individual language variety. They study the language varieties in every aspect on any level: phonetic, syntactical, stylistic and, above all, lexical.







IV. SPOKEN AND WRITTEN VARIETIES
Halliday (1985) suggests that written language is used for action (public signs, product labels, television and radio guides) for information (newspapers, magazines) for entertainment (comic strips, fiction books). However, the differences between spoken and written modes are not absolute. This means that some spoken texts will be more like written texts than others while some written texts will be more like spoken texts than others.







Ex: (1a) Go in and make yourself at home.
(1b) Someone went in and made himself at home.
(1a) is more like spoken language than (1b), even though (1a) can be used in written language and (1b) can be spoken.
Obviously, there are many differences that can be noted between written and spoken language. Sometimes speaking in a way that things would normally be written, or writing in a way that people speak can lead to language sounding strange, unnatural or inappropriate.


When speaking people tend to include contractions such as I’ll or don’t that tend not to be appropriate in formal written language. There are also many slang words that are popped into spoken language, that depending on the context are not strictly correct in written language. There are other language conventions that are constantly broken in spoken language, which are more strictly adhered to in written language. Examples of this include beginning sentences with “but” or “because” and ending sentences with prepositions.






Some grammar tends to be used almost exclusively and not in speech. An example of this would be past perfect grammar. This is typically used to narrate something and therefore is rarely used in spoken English. For example, he had thought of taking a summer house in Tuscany for some years before he met Valeria.’ It is possible to use this grammar construction in spoken English, but it is rarely done so.







Since spoken language is much more dynamic and immediate, there is much less precision in it. You will often hear native English speakers make grammar slips that they would never make in written language. Mistakes such as ‘How much apples are left?’ occur when speakers are forming sentences and changing ideas rapidly.
Since written texts can be revised and thought out more thoroughly than spoken language, they can present communicative ideas in a precise, well-ordered and presented in a







more sophisticated way engaging higher-level vocabulary and ideas than is often presented in spoken language.
Conversely, spoken language can sometimes be more communicative as it allows for clarification and additional information in a way that a written document does not. Often it is the case that the tone, intention or meaning of a written piece of language may be unclear.






In spoken language, you communicate with more than the words you use: tone and body language add a significant amount of information to the language receiver. Clear examples of this relate to usage of email, which is often written in conversational language, but without the extra language cues that accompany spoken language the writer’s intention can be misinterpreted.







Spoken and written language can be distinguished with the following points:
1. Spoken language is generally less formal than written language.
2. Spoken language tends to be less precise than written language.
3. Written language is often more articulate and sophisticated than spoken language.
4. Spoken language can be more communicative than written language due to extra cues such as body language and tone.


The varieties of choice depend on the user’s intention, social situation and immediate need:
1. Common colloquial words.
Slang is the most particular language and vastly developed by a subgroup of non-standard colloquial layer of the vocabulary of a given type of language. Besides separate words, it includes also highly figurative phraseology. Slang occurs mainly in dialogue, and serves to create speech characteristics of personages).





2. Professional and Social Jargons
A jargon is a special word used in a special context in a given language. They are used in emotive prose to depict the natural speech of a character within the framework of such device as speech- characterization. They can show vocation, education, breeding, environment and even the psychology of a personage. Slang, contrary to jargon, needs no translation, jargon is used to conceal or disguise something.






3. Vulgarisms
Vulgarism is language used by ordinary people. It is a word or phrase from the language spoken by people generally, as contrasted with a more formal or refined usage of such language. Vulgarisms are divided into expletives and swear-words, used as general exclamations and obscene words. They are emotionally and strongly charged and can be used for speech-characterization.






4. Dialectal words
Dialectal words are words that show the linguistic origin of the speakers. They are featured by accents and traits of personages to indicate their region. The number of dialectal words and their frequency also indicate the educational and cultural level of the speaker.






3. Vulgarisms
Vulgarism is a term in ordinary people`s language. It is a word or phrase from the language spoken by people generally, as contrasted with a more formal or refined usage of such language. Vulgarisms are divided into expletives and swear-words, used as general exclamations and obscene words. They are emotionally and strongly charged and can be used for speech-characterisation.







4. Dialectal words
Dialectal words are special word forms that indicate the linguistic origin of the speaker. They are introduced into the speech of personages to indicate their region. The number of dialectal words and their frequency also indicate the educational and cultural level of the speaker.







V. CONCLUSION
Studying varieties of a language, linguists have to observe many forms of the language systematically and coherently. The notion of variety is wider than style of prose or style of language. The term lect, a process of back-formation from specific terms such as dialect, idiolect, and sociolect is in use by sociolinguists. Varieties include many aspects of society such as cultural norms, expectations, and context. Varieties also include professional registers, such as







legalese, phonology, prosody and grammar which may be seen different from the standard language. For example, journalists or lawyers often use grammatical moods such as subjunctive mood or conditional mood, which are academic English and are not frequently used by normal speakers. Many special words are considered special technical terminology only in a legal document. Grammarians tend to use simple but not complicated forms. Varieties frequently contain various ways of classifying choice of words or forms according to the immediate social requirement.







In linguistics, many grammars have the concept of grammatical mood, which describes the relationship of a verb with reality and intent. There are various ways of classifying choice of words or varieties in sociolinguistics but the immediate requirement is the need to use a given variety according to the immediate social requirement.







VI. SUMMARY
Linguists investigate varieties in language according to certain parameters. It is the point that linguists study the factors affecting the varieties in language. Many varieties disappear in the process of development, but many develop and may become standard when they have been used and evolved. As mentioned in sub section 3.2 on the concept of sociolinguistic variation, marked varieties in every language meet the social requirements of the users at every given situation. Sociolinguists should investigate and determine language varieties according to societal requirements.







VII. EXERCISES
1. What is ‘language variety’?
2. What is the difference between spoken and written varieties of language?
3. What are the various categorizations of language varieties?
4. What is the point of varieties in sociolinguistics?
5. Is it true to say that ‘varieties result from social situations’?
6. What are the examples of English pidgin in Vietnamese?

7. What are the examples of French pidgin in Vietnamese?
8. Give an example of spoken and written text in Vietnamese?










Good luck!