Sociolinguistics: An Introduction to Language and Society

Sociolinguistics: An Introduction to Language and Society and millions of other books are available for Amazon Kindle. Peter Trudgill is currently Professor of English Linguistics at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. Start reading Sociolinguistics: An Introduction to.
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View all 6 comments. Oct 08, Zina rated it it was amazing. Solid, really enjoyed some of the chapters such as language and social class, but found others dry and bits repetitive. Jun 02, Tina Kacey rated it liked it Shelves: Aug 18, Gregory rated it it was amazing. Jul 09, Gladys Landing-Corretjer rated it it was amazing. Here are some of the reasons why: The at Loved it! The attempted replacement of one language by another entails an effort to obliterate whole cultures; it may be indicative of illogical ethnic attitudes [the Welsh are inferior to the English, the Kurds do not exist]; and it can seriously impair the educational progress of children who have to learn a new language before they can understand what the teacher is saying, let alone read and write.

When facing statements that other languages, dialects, pidgins or creoles are inferior to English: All languages are subject to change, and they are all the product of influence and admixture from other languages. May 14, Anagha Uppal rated it really liked it. Although the subject may fascinate you as it did me , this isn't the easiest book to read. The author gives a number of examples by which he illustrates and explains the main points and definitions. May 22, Pramudita Satria rated it really liked it. A mind opener to the relation between language and society which is written in an easy and informative way.

Some facts about language and society, backed up by scientific experiments, are concisely presented by the author that made this book a truly enjoyable read. Jun 07, Denise rated it really liked it Shelves: Excellent introduction to the topic. I didn't learn a lot new, because it is an introductory text and therefore less in-depth than I thought it would be when I picked it up -- but if you're looking for an intro to sociolinguistics, this is a good one.

Jun 05, Matthew rated it liked it. Generally well structured, unfortunately the references are stuck in an annotated bibliography at the end and not given during the text. Seems like common sense social geography in many cases. Aug 15, Margarita rated it it was amazing. Very clear and engaging introduction to current sociolinguistic theory.

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I'll definitely come back to this book for the "explain to me like I'm five" answers on topics. Jan 29, Megan rated it liked it. Boring and too British but not a bad overview. Apr 14, Jennifer rated it did not like it Shelves: So far I don't agree with many of his conclusions.

Sociolinguistics : an introduction to language and society

Aug 02, Laurane rated it it was amazing. Very informational, very complete, and very clear! I really enjoyed reading it, even though it was assigned and that demonstrates its quality!


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    • You already recently rated this item. Your rating has been recorded. Write a review Rate this item: Preview this item Preview this item. London ; New York: It can also have a profound effect on how we are perceived by others. In this fully updated edition of a classic text, Peter Trudgill explores the evidence - and the huge implications for social and educational policy. Find a copy online Links to this item Table of contents Table of contents Table of contents Sociolinguistics. Allow this favorite library to be seen by others Keep this favorite library private.

    Nowadays this difference still survives in Scotland. Talking about colonization, we can say that English people, when arrived in North Africa, noticed that there were.

    There are lots of hypotheses about its origins: Today there is a process of decreolization to became more similar to English spoken by white people. Creole English has 5 features; there is no s at third singular person; there is no copula of the verb to be in present tense she real nice ;the invariant be: The researches at the beginning of the 90is, have confirmed that AAVE derives from Creole and that during the centuries has always become similar to the English spoken by whites.

    Chapter 4 Language and sex The division of the human race into male and female is fundamental and it is reflected in human languages.

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    For example, kinship terms can vary: Also in grammar, for example in Spanish, we can specify if we are talking. In most communities, men and women communicate freely with one another, but sometimes they speak differently. One of the examples of sex differentiation comes from West Indies: But after thousand years, this mystery has been solved: Jesperen suggests that sex differentiation is the result of the phenomenon of taboo: If women used these words bad luck was considered likely to result.

    Taboo may perhaps have a powerful influence on the growth of separate sex vocabulary: In Zulu culture, it has been reported that a wife is not allowed to mention the name of her father in law and she might be put to death if she broke this taboo. In England, sex differences are smaller, but there are some words or phrases which tend to be sex bound. Mostly the differences are phonetic and phonological and the differences have reported that women use much more standard variety or the prestige accent than men, so female speakers of English speaks better than male.

    For example, in Detroit, higher classes speakers use much more the multiple negation than the lower class speakers, especially men use much more the multiple negation than women; in speech of Detroit blacks, women use much more the non prevocalic r then women, this because African American family are matriarchal and women who conduct business have contact with speakers of prestige varieties. In British English women use better forms than men: The sociolinguist Elisabeth Gordon suggests that if a woman speaks better is because she do not want to be considered sexually promiscuous.

    Gender differentiations in language arises because language is related to social attitudes: Chapter 5 Language and context When a speaker talks uses different linguistic varieties in different situations and for different purposes. The totality of linguistic varieties used in this way by a particular community of speakers can be called verbal repertoire.

    Introduction to language and society

    Linguistic varieties that are linked to a particular occupation or topic can be called registers: Registers are an example of particular kind of language being produced by a particular kind of social context, but another important factor is the formality that subsumes like situation, social family, kinship-relationship, politeness and so on For example: I require your attendance to be punctual and I want you to come on time express the same idea, but the request is formulated in different ways: Another important stylistic situation variation in English is that not only grammar and vocabulary are involved, but also the pronunciation that a speaker changes from situation to situation, depending on formality.

    One important feature of the social context is the context of the person spoken to and in particular the role relationship and relative statuses of the participants in a discourse: In English, what is complicated is the problem of personal pronoun selection, because it has only you but. In other linguistic communities, like Japanese, the context of the person addressed can produce grammatical and lexical variation, depending on the relationship between the people involved.

    In certain languages, the problem of the formality can take place between different dialects: In some communities, switching is carried out on a much larger scale and this situation can be called diglossia, which is a particular kind of language standardization where two distinct varieties of a language exist side by side. It comprises a high variety and a low variety: Chapter 6 Language and social interation Shifting and switching are not only determined by the social situation, but people can use switching for their own purposes, to manipulate or influence situations as they wish, and also to achieved particular goals In situation involving more than a language, this can be done in two ways, using two languages at once, like in Mexico, for example, where many people are bilingual, because they speak Spanish and English; for them, talking two languages means have two different cultures and this phenomenon is called code-switching.

    In other cases, people can speak two languages at once: As we saw, it can be embarrassing in English society stay with someone and not talk to them; this is because language is an important means of establishing and maintaining relationships with other people. In fact young children do not only learn the pronunciation and grammar, but also they have to learn to use language in conversation interaction: All society have rules about the way in which language should be used in social interaction.

    We can observe that these rules can be different from a society to another. The study of these rules is called ethnography of speaking: But these differences can bring to hostility and misunderstanding: This can also happen in the same society with the same culture, and not only in societies with different cultures, for example between North America and Europe, where men and women fail to understand each other and that brings to misunderstanding. One of the aspects of communication in the directness and indirectness, because in some cultures be direct means be rude, and in English society direct question are hardly asked and some aboriginal Australians fiend direct questions unusual and indirectness is used as a conversational strategy much more frequently in some cultures than others.

    Men use indirectness to state. Jennifer Coates said that men and women differ in conversation because men seem to be more competitive, while women have a cooperative style, because, especially in groups of friends, they can interrupt another speaker to agree with her of to finish what she was going to say for her in supportive style, breaking the rule that only one person speaks at once. Chapter 7 Language and nation Many individuals are bilingual or multilingual, they can speak more than a language: Multilingual nations exist all over the world and difficulties arise when one attempts to locate a country that is monolingual, for example we think to Europe as a monolingual country, because German speak German, French speak French and so on.

    But all European countries have indigenous linguistic minorities, groups of speakers who have as their native variety a language other than that which is the official. Iceland, where per cent of the population speaks are Iceland-speaking, is the exception; in some cases where the minorities are relatively large, the nation-state usually has more than one official language, like for example Switzerland, where people speak German, French and Italian.

    UK gives the appearance to be monolingual, so the visitors need to speak just English. In Europe, the most multilingual country is Romania, where population has Romanian as mother tongue, but 14 other languages are spoken. For a country be multilingual can be a problem for government and others who concerned national organization, especially at educational level: In some cases, if the two languages involved are not related and if the educational policy not encourage the minority language, it may be.

    This situation can bring to the loss of a language and of a whole culture, An approach like this has been employed by US for the widespread of minority languages groups to the English speaking majority, with the so called English only, which has disappeared. English is the normal medium and many Gaelic speakers go to some schools where there are a majority of English speakers.