Ling 390 - Intro to Linguistics - Winter 2005 Class 1 - Monday, January 3, 2005

1
Discuss calendar, readings
2
Wardhaugh Chapter 1

• What is considered grammatical in a language?
• The prescriptive vs. descriptive debate what is
  it exactly?
• Chomsky separates out performance from competence
• Says linguists task is to examine competence,
  not performance
• Linguistic theory is concerned primarily with
  an ideal speaker-listener, in a completely
  homogenous speech-community, who knows its
  language perfectly and is unaffected by such
  grammaticality irrelevant conditions such as
  memory limitations, distractions, shifts of
  attention and interest, and errors (random or
  characteristic) in applying his knowledge of the
  language in actual performance. p. 3
• Knowing how to use a language communicative
  competence

3
Wardhaugh Chapter 1
In an ideal speaker-listener homogenous speech
community, there is no variation people do not
change their performance and performance matches
competence 100 However, there IS variation in
language (as we will see shown again and again by
socioling studies) so should we as linguists
just ignore variation and call it background
noise? NO! It is in the variation, the use of
language, where we can truly examine linguistic
competence variation does have its limits as
well as its social significance (production and
perception/evaluation)
4
Wardhaugh Chapter 1
The challenge for sociolinguists (and some would
argue ALL linguists) is to explore the
co-variation of linguistic items (Hudson) and
social categories. Linguistic items
??? Social categories ???
pronunciation, word choice, grammatical structures
identity, power, class, sex, region, politeness,
status, solidarity, accommodation
5
Wardhaugh Chapter 1

• The interaction between language and society
• Social structure influence or determine
  linguistic behavior You speak the way you speak
  because of who you are
• Linguistic structure/behavior determines social
  structure Whorfian hypothesis (p. 230) you
  see the world thru your language
• Influence of lang and society is bi-directional
• Social and linguistic structure are independent
  of each other no relationship between the 2
  (Chomsky again)

6
Wardhaugh Chapter 1
7
Wardhaugh Chapter 1
Different types of sociolinguistics Chambers
favors Variationist approaches (page 11) Gumperz
suggests that there is more than this still
doesnt identify causality There is a debate
about what we can do with sociolinguistics and
what we SHOULD be doing. See Cameron critique on
p, 12
8
Wardhaugh Chapter 1
Major topics in sociolinguistics Language
change, Variation, Boundary marker (symbolic
function of language as a means of group
formation), Multilingualism, including language
contact language conflict Relativism
(linguistic relativity hypothesis) Applications
of sociolinguistic research education,
particularly in multilingual situations
communication breakdowns in service situations,
industry, legal profession, language planning and
engineering
9
Wardhaugh Chapter 1
Sociology of Language versus Sociolinguistics
Chambers 1995 (p. 11) notes that the sociology of
language more concerned with the more purely
social end of the continuum, while
sociolinguistics with the more personal, although
a great deal of overlap in the middle Sociolinguis
tics (a.k.a. micro-sociolinguistics) The study
of the relationships between language and society
with the goal of understanding the structure of
language. Typically looks at forms and uses of
language on a small scale. Sociology of language
(a.k.a. macro sociolinguistics) The study of
the relationships between language and society
with the goal of understanding the structure of
society. Often concerned with large-scale
socio-political issues. A divide between the two
approaches see p. 14 quote for a more unified
understanding
10
Wardhaugh Chapter 1

• Fields of Sociolingusitics
• Ethnography of speaking (Hymes, anthropological
  orientation, participant observer)
• Variation studies (Labov, Trudgill, Chambers,
  quantification, linguistic orientation,
  dialectology Milroys and network analysis)
• Sociology of language (Fishman, social and
  political issues, macro-sociolinguistics, domain
  analysis)
• Interactional sociolinguistics (Gumperz
  face-to-face encounters, anthropological and
  psychological in orientation)
• Conversation analysis, ethnomethodologists
  (Schegloff, Sacks sociologists, ethnic
  structure)
• Discourse analysis (Tannen large chunks of
  language, psychological and highly interpretive)
• Social psychology (Giles psychological,
  methodology highly experimental)
• Pragmatics (Austin, Grice, Searle speech act
  theory)

11
Wardhaugh Chapter 1
Sociolinguistics in all forms is generally data
driven Some of it is quantitative and statistical
analysis used to show correlation between
linguistics and social structures (usually
variationist)
12
Wardhaugh Chapter 1
Lets look at the list of Bells principles on pp.
18-19
13
Wardhaugh Chapter 1
Lets look at the list of Bells principles on pp.
18-19
14
Wardhaugh Chapter 1
Particularly the observers paradox - how does
Labov resolve this? Listen to NPR clip William
Labov - NYC