Sociolinguistics and Its Scope

Sociolinguistics

Sociolinguistics is actually the study of how a language is used in a society / Relationship between language and society.

Scope of Sociolinguistcs

According to Hudson, “Sociolinguistics is essentially a study of language as used in the society”. Indeed language is a very significant and unique feature of a culture of any society since it gives clear indications as to how people of that society behave. The relationship between a language and its users is both intricate and revealing.

Society shapes and colors language which in turn functions as the spokesman of that society. Thus society is represented by its language. The crux of what sociolinguistics is:

Society > Sociology + Language > Linguistics = Sociolinguistics

Sociolinguistics is a fairly new branch in the field of language study. Though interest in how different societies use language had always been seen as just another aspect of human behavior. In the current modern language studies, Sociolinguistics is a discipline in its own right and one that is attracting an increasing amount of attention.

Like other disciplines, Sociolinguistics is based on both theoretical and empirical (practical) work that is on both general principles and observes language behavior.

However it is because of evidence obtained from research projects that there is an enhanced interest in this important aspect of language study. Researchers have found it very revealing to observe the two way relationship between language and society.

Relationship Between Sociology and Linguistics

The relationship between sociology and linguistics can be shown by means of a diagram

The first part of the Sociolinguistcs is a prefix attached to the root part of the word:

Socio+Linguistics

It is the later part of the word (the root) that is more important. Thus Sociolinguistics is essentially a language study.

Let us see how a linguistic analysis of a data might differ from a sociolinguistic analysis of the same data.

1.       What do you want dear? (Informal) (Real Inquiry)

2.       Can I help you? (more like an offer) (Formal).

Analysis of the Sentences:

1.       Both the sentences are in the form of grammatical questions. The first one is a “WH” question while the second one is a “YES/NO” question. In the Sociolinguistic analysis we can refer to the fact that sentence 1 is more blunt and impolite because of the last word “Dear”.