LANGUAGE IN SOCIAL CONTEXT

Presented by:Linda Meylinda (1509067023)Sri Jamia Setyaningsih(1509067046)Ummi Salamah Tianotak(1509067060)

Language in Social Context

Variation and StyleAccent, Dialect, & Variety

Speech Community

Style Shifting

Register, Jargon, & Slang

PolitenessNegative & Positive Politeness

Speech Act

Contrastive Analysis

Bilingualism & MultilingualismVitality and Diglosia

Code Switching & Mixing

GenderSex and Gender

Exclusive & Preferential Features

Language ContactLingua Franca

Pidgin & Creole

Vernacularisation

DEFINITIONSOCIOLINGUISTICS P. Trudgill (1974: 32): Sociolinguistics is that part

of linguistics which is concerned with language as a social and cultural phenomenon.

Sociolinguistics (micro-sociolinguistics) is the study of language in relation to society. (Hudson, 1996: p. 4)

Micro-sociolinguistics investigates how social structure influences the way people talk and how language varieties and patterns of the correlate with social attributes such as class, sex, and age. (Coulmas ,1997: p. 2)

Language and Society

Language is a vehicle to interact with other people. Thus every people of course should own and use the social means of communication.

Language and society are un-separable two sides. Society includes people, environment, and social

system.

The existence of a language for the community is very important. This is because, in reality, men as social

beings always live in a community and need a language as a means of interaction among them.

Variation and StyleAccent and Dialect

Accent is the cumulative auditory effect of those features of pronunciation which identify where a person is from, regionally or socially. (Crystal, D. 2008).Dialect is a regionally or socially distinctive variety of language, identified by a particular set of words and grammatical structures. (Crystal, D. 2008).

Accent:a) Indonesian people speak English differently

from American, British, Australian.b) The way Papuanese speak Indonesian may

be different from Medanese.

Dialect:Bagaimana ini? (bahasa Indonesia standar)c) Macam mana? (dialek Sumatra Utara)d) Gimana, sih? (dialek Jakarta)e) Gimana, to? (dialek Jawa Tengah)

Examples of Accent and Dialect

Variety refers to the various forms of language triggered by social factors. Language may change from region to region, from one social to another, from individual to individual, and from situation to situation.

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. E.g: African American Vernacular English

Style shifting refers to a single speaker changing style in response to context.

Register, Jargon, & SlangRegister refers to a variety of language defined according to its use in social situations. e.g. a register of scientific, religious, and occupation.e.g: Headquarter; Court; Surgery

Jargon refers to a special technical vocabulary associated with a specific area of work or interest.e.g: Hattrick, LOL , kontroversi hati

Slang describes words or phrases that are used instead of more everyday terms among younger speakers and other groups with special interests.e.g: Bucks Money; killing me really hurting

POLITENESS

Politeness

Starter – How might Politeness be connected to English Language and Literature?

Learning Objective – to explore Brown and Levinson’s politeness

theory.

• The concept of politeness is crucial in any communication, but particularly in cross cultural communication

• Communication with others must take culture into consideration

• Norms of politeness vary from culture to culture

Politeness and Culture

• Face• Status• Rank• Role• Power• Age• Sex• Social Distance• Intimacy• Kinship• Group membership

Parameters of Politeness

• POLITENESS

• Brown and Levinson (1987: 60–1) argue that politenes in language is centered around the notion of face – “the public self-image that every member wants to claim for himself” – and the efforts made by interlocutors to “maintain each other’s face.”

• Politeness in an interaction, can then be defined as the means employed to show awareness of another person’s face. (Yule,1996, p. 60)

• Face wants• Within their everyday social interactions, people

generally behave as if their expectations concerning their public self-image, or their face wants, will be respected.

• Meanwhile if some actions might be interpreted as a threat to another’s face, the speaker can say something to lessen the possible threat, this is called face saving act (FSA).

• If a speaker says something that represents a threat to another individual’s expectations regarding self-image it is described as face threatening act (FTA).

Example of politeness

• A student to teacher– Student : Excuse me Mr. Buckingham, but

can I talk to you for a minute?• Friend to friend

– Hey Bucky, got a minute?

We can think of politeness in general terms. In the study of linguistic politeness, the most relevant concept is ‘face’.

Your ‘face’ in pragmatics, is your public self image.

This is the emotional and social sense of self that everyone has and expects everyone else to

recognise. Politeness can be defined as showing awareness of and

consideration for another person’s face.

If you say something that represents a threat to another person’s self-image, this is called a face-threatening act.

For example:

If you use a direct speech act to get someone to do something ‘give me that paper’ – you are behaving as if you have more social power than the other

person.

If you don’t actually have the social power (you’re not a police officer/prison warden) … then you are performing a face threatening act.

An indirect speech act in the form associated with a question: ‘can you pass me that paper please?’ removes the assumed social

power. This makes your request less threatening to the other person’s face.

Negative and Positive Face

We both have a ‘negative face’ and a ‘positive face’. What might these be?

Negative Face – is the need to be independent and free from imposition.

How might you achieve this if you’re

asking a question?

A face-saving act that emphasises a person’s negative fact will show concern about

imposition:

‘I’m sorry to bother you …’‘I know you’re busy but …’

Now we know negative face … what is positive

face?

Positive Face is the need to be connected, to belong, to be a member of the group.

How might you achieve

this?A face-saving act that emphasises a person’s positive face will show solidarity and draw

attention to a common goal:

‘Let’s do this together …’

We can say that negative face is the need to be independent and positive face is the need to be connected.

In concclusion of Negative and Positive Face

Positive and negative politeness• A positive politeness strategy leads the

requester to appeal to a common goal, and even friendship, via expression such as:

• A. How about letting me to use your pen?• B. Hey, Buddy, I’d appreciate it if you’d let me

use your pen.• Positive politeness gives a greater risk for

the speaker of suffering a refusal and maybe preceded by some “getting to know you talk”.

Negative politeness• The FSA which most common, uses a negative

politeness strategy.• It typically uses a modal verb.• Example:• A. Could you lend me a pen?• B. I’m sorry to bother you, but can I ask you for a

pen or something?• C. I know you’re busy, but might I ask you if-

emm-if you happen to have an extra pen for me?

• Contrastive analysis

An approach to second-language acquisition that focuses on points of similarity and

difference in two varieties. The assumption is that where they differ, learners will have most

difficulty.

For instance, if you want to request a drink in a bar in English you usually use some strategies that attend to the addressee’s (bartender’s)negative face wants, e.g., • Could I have a glass of red wine, please?

However, in German there is less attention to the server’s negativeface wants, and it is perfectly appropriate to say something like, • Ich kriege ein Rotwein (‘I’ll get red wine’), with no ‘please’ or ‘could’.

It is possible to add bitte (‘please’) and to say konnte (‘could’), but if you used both the request would sound absurd and slightly snooty.

In some cases, you can imagine that these sorts of differences can cause real social difficulties when learners try to transfer their native-language strategies into the language they are learning, so it is useful for researchers like Kasper to have a framework in which they can describe these differences and prescribe solutions for language teachers.

Vitality

The likelihood that a language will continue being used for a range of social functions by a community of speakers.

Demographic, social and institutional strength of a language and its speakers.

Vitality

Status Demography Institutional Support

1)Economic status2)Social status3)Sociohistorical status4)Language status – within

– without

Distribution • National territory• Concentration• Proportion

Numbers • Absolute birth rate• Mixed marriages• Immigration• Emigration

Formal a) Mass mediab) Educationc) Government

Services

Informal a)Industryb)Religionc) Culture

Diglossia

Past• defined as a situation

where two closely related languages are used in a speech community.

Present• extended to refer to any two

languages (even typologically unrelated ones) that have this kind of social and functional distribution.

Diglossia

High variety Low variety

Language with higher overt prestige, and which is used in more formal contexts and for writing (e.g., church, newspapers)

Language which is used in informal contexts (e.g., in the home, or market)

Code switching

In its most specific sense, the alternation between varieties, or codes, across sentences or

clause boundaries.

Domain Situation(al)

The social and physical setting in which speakers find themselves.

A more idiosyncratic and personalized view of the context or situation of language use. In this text, used to describe one of the motivations for code switching

Passive Knowledge

Active Knowledge

The ability to understand, but not speak, a language.

Knowledge of a linguistic variety that includes the ability to produce and use that variety, and not only understand it.

Code mixing

Generally refers to alternations between varieties, or codes, within a clause or phrase.

GENDERWho is possibly

talking?a) oh dear, you’ve put the ice-

cream into the refrigerator, again?

b) damn! You’ve put the ice-cream into the refrigerator, again?

Sex or Gender?

It is obvious that the men and women who speak a language use it in different ways

In the 1980s, it was normal for a sociolinguist to describe his/her studies as being ‘language and sex’.

The difference between the two terms are as follow:

Miriam Meyerhoff (2006) differentiates the two terms ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ suggesting that’’ the term ‘sex’ is increasingly restricted in sociolinguistics to refer to a ‘biologically’ or ‘physiologically’ based distinction between males and females‘’.

According to Meyerhoff (2006) gender is ‘’not sex of speaker which (largely) reflects biological or physiological differences between people. It is used increasingly in sociolinguistics to indicate a social identity that emerges or is constructed through social actions.

Gender Preferential and Exclusive Features

• A preferential feature is one that is distributed across speakers or groups, but is used more frequently by some than by others. It can be used by both sexes but are preferred by one of them.

• An exclusive feature is one associated with a particular user or group of users in a particular context. It is used by only one gender, by either males or females.

Preferential Feature:Women preference for standard formsMen preference for vernacular forms

Exclusive Feature:e.g: in Japanese:

Women's Form Men's Form MeaningOnaka Hara StomachTaberu Kuu Eat

Watashi Boku, are IOkasan Ohukuro MotherOishii Umai DeliciousOhiya Mizu Water

LANGUAGE CONTACT

Vernacular language:

It generally refers to a language which has not been standardised

or codified and which does not have official status (uncodified or

standardised variety). It generally refers to the most colloquial variety in a

person's linguistic repertoire.

Vernacular are usually the first language learned by people in

multilingual communities, and they are often used for a relatively narrow

range of informal functions. The function of vernacular language is to

shows their identity when they talking with the other person from the

other place.

Lingua franca: A language used for communication between different

language users, for people whose first languages differ, such as

pidgin between European colonizers and African slaves (Swahili).

Lingua franca can be describe as a language which is serving as a

regular means of communication between different linguistic groups

in a multilingual nation and used habitually by people whose mother

tongues are different in order to facilitate communication between

them.

.

Pidgin:

It is a language which has no native speakers. Pidgins develop

as a means of communication between people who don't have a

common language. Pidgins seem particularly likely to arise when two

groups with different languages are communication in a situation

where there is also third dominant language.

One such pidgin is called Tok Pisin, originally was called

Melanesian Pidgin English. It is widely used in Papua New

Guinea.

Creole:

When a pidgin becomes the language of newly-born

generations as a mother-tongue or first language, and acquires

additional vocabulary and grammatical structures to serve

their various necessary communicative needs (referential and

social functions) it becomes a Creole.

The illustration the difference between Lingua Franca, pidgin and creole.

One day a ship docked at a

harbour in a small island in

Asia, in the 15th Century.

They came to find spices

and other goods such as silk

and cotton.

THE CAPTAIN

This is their captain.

Well, he didn’t have the right

attire…. But what the heck…

He came to barter the goods

from the island with gold and

silver.

But alas, he couldn’t speak the

language.

Lingua Franca

• So he resorted to gestures, and saying a few words.

• The locals were eager to sell him things. So they too

spoke some words, pointed and waved their hands

vehemently.

• Soon enough they learnt a bit of each other’s

language. A lingua franca was then born.

Pidgin• The captain and his crew built their station there.

• They wanted more and more of the goods from the land.

• The lingua franca they used for trading, developed and used in more places, churches, schools, courts, etc. A pidgin was born

Marriage

The captain had a daughter, who came a month later

to join her dad. After three months she laid her eyes

on a local farmer, Wu. They got married after 6

months of courting, defying the objections of their

parents.

Creole• They spoke pidgin at home. • Soon a baby arrived. And another a year

later. These kids spoke pidgin literally since they could speak. So, a creole emerged.

• They lived happily ever after.• So did the Creole…-gaining more status-

up to this day..

CONCLUSION A language is an important thing in a given

community. It is not a means for communication and interaction but also for establishing and maintaining human relationships.

People’s speech reflects not only aspects of their identity such as their ethnicity, age, gender, and social background; it also reflects the contexts in which they are using the language.

The way people talk in court, in school, at business meetings and at graduation ceremonies reflect the formality of those context and the social roles of people.

Thank you!

Merci!

Dangke! Gracias!

Arigato! Xie-xie!

Big Mahalo!

Gamsahamnida!

Syukron!