1. Sociolinguistics and sociology, definition, relationship, Bells 7 criteria, Scope/ area.

Sociolinguistics:

Sociolinguistics is the study of language in relation to social factors, including differences in region, class, occupational dialect and gender, and
bilingualism. In other words, it studies how various social factors such as gender, ethnicity, age, or social class affect language. It studies how
people speak differently in various social contexts, and how people use specific functions of language to convey aspects of our identity and social
meaning. Let us take an example that investigates the appropriate usage of the words ‘black’ and ‘nigger’. We all know that the latter is racist;
but only when it is used by nonblack people. In fact, it can be used exclusively by black men. In this case, it is the social variable of ethnicity that
determines which word to be used by which people It has various subfields and branches such as dialectology, discourse analysis, ethnography
of speaking, geolinguistics, anthropological linguistics, language contact studies, secular linguistics, etc.

Def by scholars:

the study that is concerned with investigating the relationship between language and society with the goal of a better understanding of the
structure of language and of how languages function in communication (Ronald Wardhaugh, 1986: 12)

Hudson 1996: The study of language in relation to society

William Labov is the founder of the discipline of variationist sociolinguistics.

SOCIAL FACTORS

What language people choose to speak in an exchange is determined by social factors:

 The Participants: e.g., age, ranks, relationships.

 The Setting: e.g., at home, in a formal meeting, etc.

 The Topic: e.g., my tennis skills, cooking, exams.

 The Function: e.g., getting a loan, hiring a maid, asking permission to leave the room, etc.
Sociology of language is basically the study of the relationship between language and society. It studies society in relation to language; thus,
society is the object of study in this field. This field studies the language of a particular community to discover and understand the use of the
social structures and the way the people of that community use them to communicate properly. The idea that language can reflect
(automatically or deliberately) attitudes of the speakers are at the base of the sociology of language.

Hudson 1996- the study of society in relation to language.

What are the Similarities Between Sociolinguistics and Sociology of Language?

Both fields deal with the interaction between society and language.

The boundaries between these two fields are sometimes not clear

What is the Difference Between Sociolinguistics and Sociology of Language?

Sociolinguistics is the study of language in relation to social factors, including differences in region, class, occupational dialect and gender, and
bilingualism. Sociology of language, in contrast, is the study of the relations between language and society.

sociolinguistics focuses on language while sociology of language focuses on society.

sociolinguistics looks at how social factors affect language whereas the sociology of language looks at the relationship between society and
language.

Sociolinguistics vs. the Sociology of language • Sociolinguistics investigating the relationships between language and society with the goal of a
better understanding of the structure of language and of how languages function in communication • Sociology of language to discover how
social structure can be better understood through the study of language, e.g. how certain linguistic features serve to characterize particular
social arrangement

Bells:

These criteria were proposed by sociolinguist Allan Bell in 1976 and they are: standardization, vitality, historicity, autonomy, reduction, mixture,
and de facto norms. They help to define what makes some languages more 'developed' than others, and how to distinguish between a language
and a dialect.

Standardization is the process by which a language is codified in some way. This involves the development of grammars, spelling books,
dictionaries, and literature, e.g., Wycliffe’s translations of the Bible into English, Caxton's printing press in England, and Dr Johnson’s dictionary of
English. This requires agreement of what is in the language and what is not.
Vitality is the existence of a living community of speakers. This is used to distinguish living languages from dead ones. Latin is dead for no one
speaks it as a native language; it exists only in a written form, studied rather than used. Yet, a language can have force even after its death.
Classical Greek and Latin still have prestige in the Western world; Classical Arabic provides a unifying force in the Islamic world

Historicity is the fact that a particular group of people finds a sense of identity through using a particular language. This is the strongest tie of all
whether social, political, religious, or ethnic. In the nineteenth century, a German nation was unified around the German language.

Autonomy is about feeling; a language must be felt by its speakers to be different from other languages. Yet, this is a subjective criterion.
Ukrainians say their language is different from Russian. In contrast, speakers of Cantonese and Mandarin deny that they speak different
languages.

Reduction refers to the fact that a particular variety may be regarded as a sub-variety rather than as an independent entity. Speakers of Cockney
will almost certainly say that they speak a variety of English, admit that they are not representative speakers of English, and recognize the
existence of other varieties with equivalent subordinate status.

Mixture is the feelings speakers have about the 'purity' of the variety. This may be important to speakers of some languages than of others, e.g.,
more important to speakers of French and German than to those of English. This explains why speakers of pidgins and creoles have difficulty in
classifying what they speak as full languages because these varieties are mixed of other standard language

Finally, de facto norms is the feeling that that there are both 'good' speakers (who represent the norms of proper usage) and ‘poor’ speakers.
This means focusing on one particular sub-variety as representing the ‘best’ usage, e.g., Parisian French. When all the speakers of a language
feel it is badly spoken everywhere, that language may not survive. The norms of linguistic behavior, 'linguistic purism', may become very
important among specific segments of society. In English, there is a profitable industry telling people what it is ‘correct’ to say. People’s feelings
about norms have important consequences for an understanding of variation and change in language.

Scope:

Scope of Sociolinguistics: Sociolinguistics tells about the usage of language. It tells about the socio-economic situation of a person. In
Sociolinguistics language is studied on three levels; structural and functional, and social.

1. Structural: Studies the use of vocabulary, pronunciation, tense, sentence order.

2. Functional: Studies the functions of language.

3. Social: Studies the use of langue and parole.

Sociolinguistics is further divided into 2 approaches, Micro and Macro.

Micro-sociolinguistics explores the ways in which society influences a speaker's idiolect - meaning the specific language of a person - and how
people communicate with one another in line with different social variables/factors and how language varies with social attributes such as class,
sex, and age.

Macro-Sociolinguistics: This approach emphasizes on Society. It focuses more on society as a whole in relation to language, that is the study of
language related to how the society treats the language. Macro Sociolinguistics looks at issues as to why immigrants keep their native language
in some contexts and not in others, or how social identity can affect language. It focuses on the study of language. (Large-scale - group behavior).
It studies what societies do with their languages, such as: attitudes that account for the functional distribution of speech forms in society,
language shift, maintenance, and replacement, the delimitation and interaction of speech communities.

scope : Why we need to study language in relation to society?

1. Language and society are interrelated, and can't be spoken one without the other .

Language - a social entity.

Society- a group of people sharing the same language.

2. The value of language is based in the society and the people who use that language not on the language itself.

We produce value judgement of a language based on the attitude we hold for the people who use that language.

3. Language is an act of identity.

For one’s language we can say :

Whether he/she is a man or woman,

Educated or not

Which social class he or she belongs to

Where he or she is from etc.

4. LANGUAGE plays an essential role in understanding social entourage and the world around us.

What we think is determined the language is used. So to study or talk about a group of people it is highly recommend to refer to the language
they use. ( sapir whorf hypothesis)

5. Language is not only a means of communication in society but also it's also a means of establishing and maintaining social relationship
through exchanging the free goods or safe topics .

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