A socio-pragmatic comparative study of

 

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CHAPTER TWO 
REVIEW OF THE RELATED LITERATURE 
2.0. Introduction 
In order to broaden our understanding of communication in different social contexts, we 
must study sociolinguistic phenomena. Even though sociolinguistics has taken its roots 
in sociology, they are distinct in terms of the objectives they pursue. The former 
concentrates on society for purposes of understanding the features of language use in 
social contexts. The latter, however, focuses on language for understanding the society 
and its structure (Giglioli, 1972). Sociolinguistics began to flourish from the early 
sixties. Its origins, however, can be traced back to a long time ago. A review of the 
history of the field manifests the theoretical development it has undergone in 
progression towards its contemporary state. In fact, the progression has been from a 
context-free view of language towards the treatment of language in its social context. 
This change of view is the result of different theories proposed of language and its 
nature. One has to review the theories and philosophies on which the study of language 
has rested during its evolution to understand the tenets of sociolinguistics and to get an 
idea of how it has been developed. This chapter, therefore, aims at the following: (1) 
elaborating on the relationship between form, meaning, and function of an utterance, (2) 
explaining the significance of context in the course of communication, (3) discussing 
the notion of pragmatics, as well as its scope, (4) discussing the notion of the speech act 
theory and stating the flaws of this theory, (5) making some remarks on the various 
approaches to the study of conversation, (6) discussing the two most important 
conversational principles (i.e. the cooperative and the politeness principles), and (7) 
reviewing the studies on invitations in general and ostensible invitations in particular.