Quick Dictionary of Linguistics Terminology
Friday, September 2, 2011
01. Language & Society
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An Introduction to Sociolinguistics
by Janet Holmes
What do sociolinguists study?
Sociolinguistics is a term that refers to the study of the relationship between language and society. Sociolinguists also study how language is used in multilingual speech communities.
Dr. Clamons:
We look at English and other languages to explore...
02. Multilingual Communities
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disglossia:
characteristic of speech communities -- rather than individuals. Therefore, there is a range of potential relationships between disglossia and bilingualism.
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03. Language Maintenance and Shift
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The Obama fist-bump heard 'round the world.
When a language dies, the cultural knowledge embodied within it also dies. In this sense, a language death represents the death of a world view.
Colorful idioms and idiomatic associations -- with their attendant cultural context and historic association -- die...
04. Varieties - Pidgins and Creoles
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Pidgins and Creoles
Notes from Educational Cyber Playground
A pidgin is a new language which develops in situations where speakers of different languages need to communicate but don't share a common language.
The vocabulary of a pidgin comes mainly from one particular language -- called the "lexifier". The early "pre-pidgin" is...
05. Nation and Language Status
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What are implications of language policies in the lives of real people? What is the
relationship between political and economic power and language status?
National language defined: It is the main language of political, social and cultural practices, where people use it as a symbol of their national unity. Official language is the...
06. Regional Dialects
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Dialectology: Linguists studying language variation across regional areas identify life-long inhabitants and collect samples of language from them. They then plot the variant pronunciations, words, and phrases on a map, identifying where each token of a language form was spoken.
Can we tell if someone is from Iowa or Wisconsin, the...
07. Social Dialect
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Social Dialect is examining the relationship between social class, prestige factors, and language choices.
How do speakers talk differently in different social groups?
How do
speakers use language to identify themselves with a particular social
group?
Social dialects defined:
a variety of language that reflects social...
08. Gender, Age and Language
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Gender
"The nature of the relationship between gender and speech is complex, and the way gender interacts with a range of other factors needs careful examination in each speech community."
-- Holmes
Women and men do not speak in exactly the same way as each other in any community. Gender differences in language are often...
09. Ethnicity and Social Context
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Imaginationality
My newest invented word: “Imaginationality”
Idea for language and national identity. Imaginationality: The American Dreamers / The American Halluci-Nation
. . . interplay of Image and History . . . of belonging . . . of dreaming . . .
Considering
how deeply America has invested in the dimensions...
10. Mexican American Language Community
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Minnesota's Mexican American Language Community
In the U.S., Spanish language use alone seems to have come to constitute a common identity of being Latino or Hispanic, despite the broadness and arbitrariness of the category. Over time, this common identity has been strengthened through struggles to gain recognition for bilingual...
11. Language Change
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What aspects of language change over time?
Sociolinguists help us in our understanding of the relationship between language change and historical events, language contact, and social affiliation.
We know that all aspects of language change over time: pronunciation, lexicon, syntax, and pragmatics.
Notes on research fromNicole...
12. Style, Context, and Register
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Identify how language variation correlates with social situations
People’s styles of speech and written communication reflect and express not only aspects of their identity such as their ethnicity, age, gender, and social background -- they also indicate the contexts in which language is being used. Formality and status are at play...
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