FACULTY:

FACULTY OF EDUCATION AND LANGUAGES

SEMESTER / YEAR:
MAY 2015 / SEMESTER 11

COURSE CODE:
HBET1403
SOCIOLINGUISTICS IN LANGUAGE TEACHING

MATRICULATION NO:

781117065006001

IDENTITY CARD NO.

781117065006

TELEPHONE NO.

019- 4355002

E-MAIL

emyridz@gmail.com

LEARNING CENTRE

PERAK LEARNING CENTER

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1. What are Languages and Dialects?

Obviously, there are no generally accepted criteria for distinctive languages from dialects,
although a number of paradigms are present, which render now and again differing results.
The precise distinction is therefore a subjective one, reliant on the users frame of reference.
Specific language varieties are regularly called dialects rather than languages. This is because
dialects do not differ enough from each other to be considered truly separate languages, but
there are familiar differences between them. This is often as the speakers of any given dialect
reside in different geographical areas, causing the dialects to develop differently from a
shared base language.
Anthropological linguists characterize dialect as the specific form of a language used
by a speech community. In other words, the variation between language and dialect is the
difference between the abstract or general and the concrete or particular. From this view of
perspective, there is no one speaks a language everyone speaks a dialect of a language.
Those who identify a exacting dialect as the standard or proper version of a language are
in fact using these terms to express a social characteristic.
Frequently, the standard language is close to the sociolect of the elite class. In groups
where social standards play less important roles, dialect may simply be used to transfer to
restrained regional variations in linguistic practices that are measured mutually intelligible,
playing an important role to place strangers. There are too many dialects found around the
world, by which the linguist simply means that there are many subtle variations among
speakers who for the most part understand each other and recognize that they are each
speaking the same way in a general sense. Now, modern day linguists know that the status
of language is not solely determined by linguistic criteria, but it is also the result of a
historical and political development. As an example, Romansh came to be a written language,
and therefore it is recognized as a language, even though it is very close to the Lombardic
Alpine dialects. But an opposite example is the case of Chinese, whose variations such as
Mandarin and Cantonese are often considered dialects and not languages, despite their mutual
unintelligibility, because they distribute a common literary standard and common body of
literature.

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2. Dialect vs Language
If there is anyone would ask you what your language is, would you say it is English? Then, if
a same person asking you what your dialect is? Many people are at a complete loss if there
should be a distinction between the two. Foremost, linguists define the word dialect as a
diversity of a language that is being used by a certain group of people in a particular
geographical location. So how does it differ from a language? Well, language is said to be the
more commonly accepted tongue of a country. This means that the dialect is just known as
the homely version of the language.
Language is the sum of the parts (individual dialects). For example, the English
language is the total amount of a collection of sublanguages such as Australian English,
Cockney, and Yorkshire English. This is also the reasons why language is mostly more
prominent as opposed to a dialect. In the 1980s and 1990s, dialects were even regarded as
deviations from the standard (the language).
As there is no clear-cut agreement yet among researchers, it is actually safe to say that
the term dialect is a more local form of the bigger language. Being described as local,
dialects distribute the same characteristics of grammar (not of necessity pronunciation and
vocabulary) with its nearby linguistic spaces. In addition, many also difference of opinion
that their difference is more of a political, historical, and sociological sense rather than of
linguistics. The difference is rather subjective than objective. The two cannot be distinguished
by desirable quality of the structural differences like how you compare the English language
from the Chinese language.
Language is politically strong-minded. This means that a powerful group of people
like an army or the government can say which of the many dialects will be chosen as the
official language of a state. This has been done in many historical accounts worldwide.
Furthermore, the dialect and language of a certain location must be related in a way that they
are mutually intelligible. People who reside at that place speak the same kind of language or
dialect bearing the same characteristics as their inherent language. If these individuals will
not be able to understand one another, then they must be conversing using unalike languages.

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However, this is still not a hard and fast law as in the case of the Norwegian and Swedish
denominations that speak different kinds of languages yet find their languages are near
mutually intelligible.

3. Problem Defining Language and Dialect

Nevertheless, problems also arise when we start to seek to differentiate dialects from
languages. First off, the term dialect in popular usage often carries an implication of
substandard. That is, it is somehow not as good as the standard language. The term itself is
equally valid to all varieties of a languageincluding the dialect that might become the
standard. REMEMBER: EVERY DIALECT IS EQUAL .Linguists usually drawn near
dialects as descriptively neutral terms, seeing them as regionally or socially distinct varieties
of a language that are mutually intelligible with other varieties.
4. Bells Seven Criterias
Bell (1976 in Wardhaugh 1998), has outlined seven criteria which might help differentiate
language and dialect. A language may accomplish any or several subsets of these criteria:
Standardization is refers to the practice by which a language has been codified in
some way that generally involves the development of such things as grammars and
dictionaries. Governments every now and then very purposely involve themselves in
the standardization process by establishing official bodies of one kind or another to
legalize language matters or to encourage changes which are felt advantageous.
Standardization is sometimes deliberately undertaken rather rapidly for political
reasons. Besides, it is also obviously one which attempts either to lessen or get rid of
diversity and variety. The standardization performs a variety of functions that are to
unify individuals and groups within a larger community while at the same time
separating the community that results from other communication; to reflect and
symbolize some kind of identity; and to give status to the speakers marking off those
who employ it from those who do not.

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Vitality is refers to the continuation of a living community of speakers. This condition

can be used to distinguish languages that are alive from those are dead. Many
languages while not dead yet, yet are obviously dying: the number of people who
speak them diminishes significantly each year and the process seems permanent, so
that the best one can say of their vitality is that it is flagging. A language can stay on a
considerable force even after it is dead, that is, even after it is no longer spoken as
anyones first language and exists almost totally in one or more written forms,
knowledge of which is acquired only through formal education. Classical Greek and
Latin still have considerable prestige in the Western world, and speakers of many
modern languages continue to draw on them in a variety of ways.
Autonomy is refers to an interesting idea because it is related to one of feeling. A
language must be felt by its speakers to be unlike from other languages. However, this
is a very subjective criterion. Ukrainians say their language is not Russian. Some
speakers of Black English preserve that their language is not a variety of English but
is a separate language in its own right. In contrast, speakers of Cantonese and
Mandarin reject that they speak different languages: they maintain that Cantonese and
Mandarin are not autonomous languages but are just two varieties of Chinese.
Reduction is refers to the fact that a exacting variety may be regarded as a sub-variety
rather than as an independent entity. Speakers of Cockney will roughly certainly say
that they speak a variety of English, will confess that they are not representative
speakers of English, and will be familiar with the existence of other varieties with
equivalent subordinate status. Sometimes the decrease is in the kinds of opportunities
afforded to users of the variety. For example, there may be a reduction of resources;
that is, the variety may lack a writing system. Or there may be significant restrictions
in use; e.g., pidgin languages are much reduced in the functions they serve in society
in contrast to standardized languages.
While Historicity is refers to the fact that a particular group of people finds a sense of
identity all the way through using a particular language: it belongs to them. Social,
political, religious, or ethnic ties may also be important for the group, but the bond
provided by a common language may prove to be the strongest tie of all. Historicity
can be long-standing: speakers of the different varieties of colloquial Arabic make
much of a common linguistic ancestry, as obviously do speakers of Chinese.

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Mixture is refers to feelings of the speakers have about the purity of the variety they
speak. This condition appears to be more important to speakers of some languages
than of others, e.g., more important to speakers of French and German than to
speakers of English. However, it partly explains why speakers of pidgins and creoles
have difficulty in classifying what they speak as full languages: these varieties are, in
certain respects, to a certain extent obviously mixed, and the people who speak them
often feel that the varieties are neither one thing nor another, but rather are debased,
deficient, degenerate, or marginal varieties of some other standard language.
The last criterion is De facto norms which is refer to the feeling that many speakers
have that there are both good speakers and poor speakers and that the good
speakers stand for the norms of proper usage. Sometimes this means focusing on one
particular sub variety as representing the best usage. Standards must not only be
recognized (by the first criterion above), but they must also be observed. When all the
speakers of a language feel that it is badly spoken or badly written almost everywhere,
that language may have extensive difficulty in surviving; in fact, such a feeling is
often associated with a language that is dying. Concern with the norms of linguistic
behaviour may turn out to be very important among specific segments of society. For
example, so far as English is concerned, there is a quite money-making industry
devoted to telling people how they should behave linguistically, what it is correct to
say, what to avoid saying, and so on. Peoples feelings about norms have important
cost for an understanding of both variation and change in language.

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5. You and Me and Discrimination

This last example is mainly interesting for us, as second language speakers. It is very easy to
take for granted that someone who does not speak a language very well is not intelligent. If I
be capable of speak English very well, but if I go to an English speaking country, like the
U.S. or Britain, I will find myself discriminated against to some extent because of my accent
or because of minor mistakes that I may possibly make in speaking the English language.
There is no uncertainty in my mind that people will have been discriminated in opposition to
in small waysthankfully nothing bigbecause if we do not speak the language well and
people consider this some sort of mark against me. Or else, another example, if I do not learn
the language in the amount of time people expect me tothat is as fast as they think I should,
then I also may not be considered very intelligent, even though it is well known that it takes a
very long time to learn a second language and that people learn some things in a language
faster than others.

6. Avoid Abusing Dialect

Once it comes to dialect, I suggest moderation in all ways. If you have a very good ear
and are well-acquainted with a particular accent or dialect, you are more than likely to
mess up it. So please keep these guidelines in mind: Think about your characters'
backgrounds, their education level, their ethnicity and social class, where they live (and
where they grew up if it's different from their current locale). Take into thought also your
reading audience. If you know in general who your readers are, and if you must use
unfamiliar slang and vernacular, be sure you make it understandable by context at the
very least, or even better, by explanation.

7. Conclusion
It is understandable that through studying a language possibly will not cover only its microaspects, such as phoneme, morpheme, and syntax; but also by its community. This makes the
language study extra interesting as it deals with social phenomena that happen in a society.

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REFERENCES

Bell, R.T. (1976). Sociolinguistics, Goals, Approaches, and Problems. London: Batsford
Chambers, J. and Trudgill, P. (1997) Dialectology. 2nd edition. London: Cambridge
University Press.
Dole imam.( 2010 ) Language Varieties.
http://imandole.blogspot.com/2010/05/language-varieties.html (Accessed 2015-05-15).

Holmet, janet. ( 1992 ). An Introduction to Sociolinguistic.London : Longman

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociolect(Accessed 2015-05-15).

Holmes, Janet. 2001. An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. Essex: Pearson Education Limited.

Hudson, R. and Holmes, J. (1995) Children's use of spoken Standard English. London:
School Curriculum and Assessment Authority.
Jenkins, J. (2000). The phonology of English as an international language. Oxford University
Press.
Meurer, J. L. (1988). WARDHAUGH, Ronald. 1986. An introduction to sociolinguistics.
New York: Basil Blackwell, 388pp. Ilha do Desterro A Journal of English Language,
Literatures in English and Cultural Studies, (20), 107-109.
Nevalainen, T., & Raumolin-Brunberg, H. (2014). Historical sociolinguistics. Routledge.
Rhlemann, C., & McCarthy, M. (2007). Conversation in context: a corpus-driven approach.
Continuum Intl Pub Group.
Wardhaugh, Ronald. 1986. An Introduction to Sociolinguistics.New York: Basil Blackwell
Inc.
Wardhaugh Ronald. ( 2006 ). An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. London: lackwell
Publishing Ltd.

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Wardhaugh, R., & Fuller, J. M. (2014). An introduction to sociolinguistics. John Wiley &

Wolfram, Walt (2004). "Social varieties of American English". In E. Finegan and J.R.
Rickford. Language in the USA: Themes for the Twenty-first Century. Cambridge University
Press.ISBN 0-521-77747-X.

https://www.ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=dialects&submit.x=33&submit.y=18
http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/linguistics/dialects.jsp