LANGUAGE IN

SOCIETY
LADY LOU C. PIDO, MALT
Group Activity:
A. Identify the contributing factors why the following exist
in the society.
B. Identify when, where, and which environment do these
term exist.
C. Discuss the positive and negative effects of their
existence in the culture and society.
1. Pidgin, Creole, Lingua Franca
2. Bilingualism, Code Switching, Borrowing
3. Style, Jargon, Slang, Euphemism
4. Language change and variation
Group Activity:
A. Choose a graphic organizer to present your ideas.
Please prepare to share screen tomorrow.
B. Choose 1 person each to discuss the factors (1),
environment/s (1) and effects of the linguistic
terms (1).
C. Each person will be given a maximum of (3
mins) to discuss his/her assigned topic. Thus,
each Group will be given maximum of 6
minutes each to present via GMeet tomorrow.
Objectives of this lesson
At the end of the unit, you are expected to:

a. present the established facts and principles of

sociolinguistics; and
b. review some general ideas about how language
change occurs,
and look at research variationist sociolinguists have
done on
changes in progress.
Language is a city to the
building of which every
human being brought
a stone.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Letters and
Social Aims, 1876
- All speakers of English can talk to each other
and pretty much understand each other. Yet, no DIAL
two of us speak exactly alike. Some differences ECTS
are the result of age, sex, social situation, and
where and when the language was learned.
These differences are reflected in word choices,
the pronunciation of words, and grammatical
rules.

IDIOLECT- The language of an individual

Speaker with its unique characteristics
 In reality, what one finds is
DIAL
E CTS
that there is no sudden
major break between
dialects. Rather, dialects
merge into each other,
forming a dialect
continuum.
 The different variants of English
used by men and women are GEND
E RLEC
sometimes called “genderlects” (a TS
blend of gender and dialect).
Variations in the language of men and
women occur in many, if not all,
languages. In Japanese, women may
choose to speak a distinct female
dialect, although they know the
standard dialect used by both men
LANGUAGES
IN CONTACT
- Many areas of the world are
populated by people who speak Lingu
a Franc
diverse languages. In such areas, as
where groups desire social or
commercial communication, one
language is often used by
common agreement. Such a
language is called a lingua
franca.
In medieval times, a trade language
Lingu
based largely on the languages that a Fran
ca s
became modern Italian and Provençal
came into use in the Mediterranean
ports. That language was called
Lingua Franca, ‘Frankish language.’
The term lingua franca was
generalized to other languages
similarly used. Thus, any language can
be a lingua franca.
 Contact Languages: Pidgins and Creoles
Creole
defined as a language that has evolved
Pidgin in a contact situation to become the
native language of a generation of
language used to
speakers.
communicate with one
another that is not native to Creolization
anyone involves the linguistic expansion in the
lexicon and grammar of existing pidgins, and
Piginization an increase in the contexts of use
Pidginization (the creation of a pidgin)
thus involves a simplification of languages
and a reduction in the number of domains
of
use.
In creoles spoken in the South Pacific the affix -im
is added to transitive verbs,
but when the verb has no object
the -im ending does not occur:
  The term bilingualism refers to the
ability to speak two (or more)
languages, either by an individual
ING UALIS speaker, individual bilingualism, or
BI L
M
within a society, societal
bilingualism.
 CODESWITCHING
Codeswitching is a speech style unique to bilinguals, in
which fluent speakers switch languages between or
within sentences, as illustrated by the following
sentence:
- Sometimes I’ll start a sentence in English and termino en español.
- Sometimes I’ll start a sentence in English and finish it in Spanish.
 CODESWITCHING
Codeswitching is to be distinguished from (bilingual)
borrowing, which occurs when a word or short expression
from one language occurs embedded among the words of
a second language and adapts to the regular phonology,
morphology, and syntax of the second language. In
codeswitching, in contrast, the two languages that are
interwoven preserve their own phonological and other
grammatical properties.
 Codeswitching vs.
Borrowing
Codeswitching
Borrowing

I love biscotti I love biscottis

[biskɔtːi] with my [bɪskaɾiz] with my
coffee. coffee
LANGUAGE IN
USE
 STYLES
 Most speakers of a language speak one
way with friends, another on a job
interview or presenting a report in class,
another talking to small children, another
with their parents, and so on.
 These “situation dialects” are called
styles, or registers.
 STYLES

 Informal styles, although permitting certain abbreviations and

deletions not permitted in formal speech, are also rule-governed.
 For example, questions are often shortened with the subject you
and the auxiliary verb deleted.
 You can ask Running the marathon? or You running the
marathon?instead of the more formal Are you running the
marathon? but you cannot shorten the question to *Are
running the marathon?
 Informal talk is not anarchy.
 SLANG

- One mark of an informal style is the frequent

occurrence of slang.
- Slang is something that nearly everyone uses
and recognizes, but nobody can define precisely.
- It is more metaphorical, playful, elliptical, vivid,
and shorter-lived than ordinary language.
 SLANG
- The use of slang has introduced many new words
into the language by recombining old words into
new meanings.
- Spaced out, right on, hang-up, drilldown, and rip-off
have all gained a degree of acceptance.
- Slang also introduces entirely new words such as
barf, flub, hoodie, and dis.
 SLANG
- Finally, slang often consists of ascribing entirely
new meanings to old words.
- Rave has broadened its meaning to ‘an all-night
dance party,’ where ecstasy (slang for a kind of
drug) is taken to provoke wakefulness; crib refers
to one’s home and posse to one’s cohorts.
 Jargon and Argot

 Practically every conceivable science,

profession, trade, and occupation uses specific
slang terms called jargon, or argot.
 Linguistic jargon, some of which is used in this
book, consists of terms such as phoneme,
morpheme, case, lexicon, phrase structure rule,
X-bar schema, and so on.
 Jargon and Argot

 Part of the reason for specialized

terminology is for clarity of communication,
but part is also for speakers to identify
themselves with persons with whom they
share interests.
 Euphimism
 A euphemism is a word or phrase that replaces a taboo word or
serves to avoid frightening or unpleasant subjects.
 In many societies, because death is feared, there are many
euphemisms related to this subject.
 People are less apt to die and more apt to pass on or pass away.
 Those who take care of your loved ones who have passed away
are more likely to be funeral directors than morticians or
undertakers.
 LANGUAGE
VARIATION
AND CHANGE
 The Traditional
View

In what we will call the

traditional view of language
change, the only changes that are
important in a language are those
that can be demonstrated to have
structural consequences.
 LANGUAGE
phonemic split,
VARIATION AND
CHANGE situations in which there
was no contrast at one
time but a contrast
phonemic developed
coalescence

situations in which a contrast

existed at one time but was later
lost,
 LANGUAGE
VARIATION AND
internally motivated
CHANGE language change,
Externally motivated
change histories of languages showing
A second kind of change in a language the structural changes that have
is externally motivated. This is change occurred over periods of time
brought about through language through use of this principle of
contact. Changes that occur ‘contrast vs. lack of contrast.
through borrowing from other
dialects or languages are often
quite clearly distinguishable, for a
while at least, from changes that
come about internally.
 Trees and Waves
 The traditional view of language change also favors a
family-tree account of change and of the relationships
among languages.
 Linguists tend to reconstruct the histories of related
languages or varieties of a language in such a way that
sharp differentiations are made between those languages
or varieties, so that at one point in time one thing (that is, a
language itself, or a variety, or even a specific linguistic
item) splits into two or more, or is lost.
 A change may even spread
directly from one city to another, Chang
leapfrogging, as it were, for a ea
space: cross
ur
while at least, smaller center ban
physic s and
intervening communities. The al barr
iers
actual scale may vary, for it is
the relative densities of the
various places that are important
not their absolute size, that is,
city town > village, with later
filling of gaps.
For example, Britain (2002, 612–16) describes
how in the Fens of England such a model explains
the diffusion pattern in an area in which there are
only two towns, King’s Lynn and Wisbech, with
populations over 20,000 and only fourteen miles
apart. T
 Change over time or age-grading?

apparent time studies age-grading

 surveys showing aged-related
differences  that is, of using speech
 In such studies, the differences
appropriate to your age
between older speakers and
group, features which you
younger speakers is thought to
indicate changes in progress. may no longer use when
Older speakers’ speech reflects you are older.
the language they used when
they were young, so the
differences between that and
how young people speak today
may reflect language changes.
 Gender and language change
- One generalization that has been made is that changes toward more
vernacular forms tend to be led by men, while changes toward the standard tend
to be led by women.

- As pointed out by Romaine (2003), one basic criticism of general

interpretations about sex and language change is of the underlying premises
about the nature of sex categories and the nature of language: ‘This approach
has limited explanatory power since it starts with the categories of male
and female and social class as fixed and stable givens rather than as
varying constructs themselves in need of explanation’
-
 Gender and language change
- Other problems with assumptions about women’s language
as reflecting their desire for prestige noted by Romaine
include:
- (1) they ignore the role of, and access to, education in the
use of standard language features;
- (2) there is a lack of focus on standard language as
something acquired and used in interactions with people
outside one’s own social (i.e., social class or ethnic) group;
 Gender and language change
- Other problems with assumptions about women’s language as
reflecting their desire for prestige noted by Romaine include:
- (3) they tend not to recognize that women may be norm-
makers, that is, linguistic forms become more prestigious
when they are used by women; and
- (4) they do not consider that women may not be seeking out
prestigious forms as much as avoiding stigmatized ones.
 Language change and the
linguistic marketplace
Linguistic marketplace forces may also be at work here: what do
individuals want and what will they accept or reject linguistically to
satisfy these wants? As the introduction to Bourdieu (1991, 57) says:
THANK YOU FOR LISTENING!
God blessyou and study well!