Chapter 9 Language and Society 语言和社会：社会语言学.pdfVIP

Chapter 9 Language and Society① Questions for discussion: 1. How are culture and language related to each other? 2. How do different social factors, like age and gender, affect language use? 3. How do people talk differently in different situations? 4. What are the other varieties of language besides regional dialects? 5. Can you imagine two standard languages used in one nation? 9.1 Sociolinguistics 9.1.1 Definition (p160) ★ Sociolinguistics is the sub-field of linguistics that studies the relation between language and society, between the uses of language and the the social structures in which the users of language live.  Metaphorically, language is regarded as a mirror of society, through which we can understand social activities of a certain society better.  Functionally, society provides language with a suitable context of use, in which we can enjoy aspects fo language vividly and truthfully. 9.1.2 Two Fundamental Concepts ★  Speech community: a group of people who form a community (e.g. a village, a region, a nation) and share the same lanugage or a particular variety of a language.  Speech variety (language variety): any distinguishable form of speech used by a speaker (e.g. idiolect) or a group of speakers (dialect, sociolect). 9.1.3 Two approaches/perspectives (p160) ◆  Micro-sociolinguistics (sociolinguistic study of language): the study of potential social factors for a description and explanation of some linguistic variations, e.g. regional dialects, social dialects, Pidgin and Creole.  Macro-sociolinguistics (sociolinguistic study of society): the study of language use to know more about a given society or community, e.g. bilingualism, language planning, language standardization, etc. Questions for discussion: 1. What disciplines/studies have close relevance to the study of socioli