Sociolinguistics Exam: Axis of Variation

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Communicative Competence

The competence that enables members of a community to conduct and interpret speech.

Social, dialogue, profusion, ideology

Language is s____, d______, p________, and I_________.

Language and policy planning

the configuration of languages within and beyond nations, and an applied outworking in policies for areas such as language education, maintenance and standardization.

Applied Linguistics

Language teaching and learning, but “linguistics applied” can cover many things that have a strong social emphasis, such as language and the law. 

Contact Linguistics

The study of pidgin and creoles, languages that have resulted from contact.

Code Switching

When multilingual speakers mix their languages as they talk

Dialectology

A traditional focus on rural dialects

Historical Linguistics

Studies how languages have changed in the past, often with little regard for the society in which the changes took place

Language and Gender

The interaction of language and gender, as well as gender discrimination through language.

Pragmatics

Language use in its immediate interactional context

Linguistic Anthropology

Overlaps significantly with sociolinguistics, involving a particular method rather than different subject matter.

Conversational Analysis 

The detailed investigation of verbal interaction, the rules by which conversation operates, and the way in which the participants understand what is going on between them. 

Discourse Analysis

The social and political significance of language

Social psychology of language

Studies language attitudes, the role of language in group behavior and relations, and language and ethnicity.

Speech Styles

______ _____ shape group membership

Lexicons

______ establish shared cultural concepts within speech communities

Sociology of Language

Which approach to sociolinguistic research asks, “Which groups speak which languages/dialects?

Ethnographic-international

Which approach to sociolinguistic research asks, “How does language use inform cultural understanding?”

Variationist

Which approach to sociolinguistic research asks, “How do particular linguistic features vary with different social factors such as age or SES? (Associated with Labov)

Critical-constructivist

Which approach to sociolinguistic research asks, “Why (for what political and social reasons) do people use speech varieties? What social inequities are revealed in language use?”

Emic

Coming from within a culture (an insider perspective)

Etic

Coming from outside a culture (an outsider perspective)

Bloomfield

_____ (Last name) argues that bilingualism is “The native-like control of two languages.”

Edwards

_______ (last name) claims that everyone is bilingual - asserting that even a few words gives a person claim to that language.

Individual, social 

productive, receptive

Primary, secondary

Additive, subtractive 

Stable, dynamic

Indigenous, immigrant 

Six dimensions of bilingualism 

1. I______ vs. s_____

2. P_______ vs. R________

3. P_______ vs. S_________

4. A_______ vs. S________

5. S_______ vs. D_______

6. I__________ vs. I___________-

Multilingualism

The various forms of social, institutional and individual ways that we go about using more than one language.

Pluralingualism

Various languages and varieties of language and different forms of knowledge

Dialect boundaries

_____ _________ can be reflected in geographical barriers, or social, political or cultural differences. 

Dialect

a “geographically defined” variety of language intelligible to speakers of a different dialect of the same language

Dialectology

The search for spatially and geographically determined language differences

Lexical diffusion

Different words shifting an different times

Non-mobile older rural males

NORMS stands for

Linguistic landscape

_________ is represented through street names, shopfronts, billboards and graffiti

Expansion diffusion 

________ _______ puts individual speakers of one dialect in regular contact with speakers of another

Relocation diffusion

Groups of speakers shift residence into another dialect area

Wave

The _____ model sees linguistic innovations as spreading out from a central point - like ripples from a stone dropped in a pond.

Cascade 

The ______ model is more common and sees changes flow through an urban hierarchy - from big city to smaller city to town to village to country. 

Mixing

The initial stage when the input dialects of all the immigrants mix freely in the new locale

Leveling

The loss of “marked” input-dialect features

Simplification 

The process by which irregularities are ironed out 

Gradient stratification

The relatively gradual differences between classes

Sharp stratification

The relatively drastic differences between classes

Ethnicity 

A shared sense of belonging to an ethnic group that has a common culture, heritage, and background, underpinned by a shared language

A community that shares the same ethnicity, a common culture, heritage, and background underpinned by a shared language and, in some cases, attachment to a particular piece of territory.

Genderlect

A speech variety of communication style particularly associated with one sex; shaped by cultural factors.

Difference, deficit, dominance 

Three paradigms for interpreting M/F difference in speech