Lesson 2 PDF
Lesson 2 PDF
Lesson 2 PDF
SOCIOLINGUISTICS
Sociolinguistics is concerned with language in social and cultural context, especially how people
with different social identities (e.g. gender, age, race, ethnicity, class) speak and how their speech
changes in different situations. Some of the issues addressed are how features of dialects (ways of
pronouncing words, choice of words, patterns of words) cluster together to form personal styles of
speech; why people from different communities or cultures can misunderstand what is meant, said
and done based on the different ways they use language. Sociolinguistics encompasses a range of
methodologies, both quantitative and qualitative. For example, a sociolinguist might determine
through study of social attitudes that a particular vernacular would not be considered appropriate
language use in a business or professional setting.
Discourse analysis focuses on language use above the sentence (in text) and beyond the
sentence (in context). Some of the issues addressed are the following: how texts build cohesion (the
word and meaning relationships that hold a text together) and coherence (the overall unity, topic,
and message); how texts that tell a story (a narrative) differ from those that describe something,
provide an explanation or list a set of instructions.
1. 'Hey!',
2. 'Excuse me!', and
3. 'Sir!' or 'Ma'am!'
is grammatical and a fully meaningful contribution to the discourse of the moment, but only one of
them may satisfy societal expectations and the speaker's preferred presentation of self.
Speech community is a concept in sociolinguistics that describes a distinct group of people who
use language in a unique and mutually accepted way among themselves.
c. A person who speaks two languages fluently is most properly referred to by which of these
terms?
-Magnalingual
-Multilingual
-Extralingual
-Bilingual
d. To what does the term "lingua franca" refer?
-Speaking French
-A shared language primarily used for business, education or political reasons.
-Speaking bluntly or directly
-A dialect spoken in the Franconian region of Germany
world wide web - a connection between the files that allows data to be transferred from one
file to the other
link - a representation of a facial expression such as a smile or frown, formed by
various combinations of keyboard characters
website - a shortened form of a word or phrase
web browser - an abbreviation used as a word and formed from the initial components in a
phrase or a word
acronym - a system for finding information on the Internet through the use of linked
documents. All the servers linked together
abbreviation - virtual location on WWW, containing several subject or company related
webpages and data files accessible through a browser
emoticon - a computer program used to navigate the world wide web