William Labov, a prominent American sociolinguist, “the father” of sociolinguistic experiment, defines sociolinguistics as a humanity that studies “the language in its social context”. This means that the attention of sociolinguistics is centered neither on the language itself, nor on its inner structure, but on the way it is used by people belonging to this or that society.
to study how the language is
used by people
of this or that society
to study how the language is
influenced by the changes
happening in the society where
this language exists
1
2
There are many interconnections between sociolinguistics and other disciplines Scholars from a variety of other disciplines have an interest here, e.g., anthropologists, psychologists, educators, and language planners.
William Labov has described it
as follows: it deals with
large-scale social factors,
and their mutual interaction
with languages and dialects.
According to Florian Coulmas, it investigates how social structure influences the way people talk and how language varieties and patterns of use correlate with social attributes such as class, sex, and age.
Micro
sociolinguistics
Macro
sociolinguistics
(or sociology of language)
studies processes in big
social groups
– states, regions etc.
(referred to by some scholars as sociolinguistics proper) studies language processes in small social groups
1.2. Types of sociolinguistics - Synchronic sociolinguistics studies relations between language and social institutes as they are at a given period.
- Diachronic sociolinguistics studies the development of the language as inseparably linked to social development.
- Theoretical sociolinguistics studies basic problems and laws concerning the relationship between language and society.
- Experimental sociolinguistics obtains empirical data proving theoretical schemes.
- Applied sociolinguistics solves practical problems of language teaching and acquisition, language policy.
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