Sociolinguistics and the Sociology of Language

Some investigators have found it appropriate to try to introduce a distinction between sociolinguistics or micro-sociolinguistics and the

sociology of language or macro-sociolinguistics. In this distinction, sociolinguistics is concerned with investigating the relationships between language and society with the goal being a better understanding of the

structure of language and of how languages function in communication; the equivalent goal in the sociology of language is trying to discover how

social structure can be better understood through the study of language, e.g., how certain linguistic features serve to characterize particular social arrangements. Hudson (1996, p. 4) has described the difference as follows:

sociolinguistics is ‘the study of language in relation to society,’ whereas the sociology of language is ‘the study of society in relation to language.’ In

other words, in sociolinguistics we study language and society in order to find out as much as we can about what kind of thing language is, and in the sociology of language we reverse the direction of our interest. Using the

alternative terms given above, Coulmas (1997, p. 2) says that ‘micro-sociolingustics investigates how social structure influences the way people talk and how language varieties and patterns of use correlate with social

attributes such as class, sex, and age. Macro-sociolinguistics, on the other hand, studies what societies do with their languages, that is, attitudes and

attachments that account for the functional distribution of speech forms in society, language shift, maintenance, and replacement, the delimitation and interaction of speech communities.’

Depending on the scope of the analysis, sociolinguistics may try to analyze

specific differences of a group of speakers in a speech community at a micro level. In this case the analysis would refer to speech differences in pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary within a single speech

community in order to determine some features such as educational background, economic status or social class. In India, for example, there are many castes (traditional social classes in the Hindu society) and there

are distinct linguistic features that distinguish one from another.

Discovering which languages and language varieties are spoken by members of different speech communities in different situations, and why, has been one of the primary descriptive tasks of sociolinguistics. When we

examine the distribution and use of languages within communities (cities, regions, states, nations and the world) we are dealing with fundamental sociological concerns, and indeed often with matters of social policy, where

the use of languages needs to be consciously planned and implemented. A separate, national language, for example, is often perceived as a necessary

condition for a nation to exist, although the globalizing of modern work, lifestyles and politics makes this seem a dated idea in many environments.

Once again, there are both objective and subjective aspects to the sociology of language. Serbian and Croatian are good examples of languages which,

until the war that broke out in the former Yugoslavia in 1991, were treated as one language, Serbo-Croat. The main difference between the two varieties was that they were written in different alphabets, Cyrillic and

Roman respectively. But, after the war started, linguists and non-linguists in the former Yugoslavia went to considerable lengths to establish the varieties as separate languages by asserting how much the two codes

differed structurally. Ethnic identity is often tied to a national or ethnic language, but there are important exceptions. For example, the Irish have

lost Irish Gaelic but not a sense of nationhood. Many American aboriginal (or ‘native’) peoples have lost their indigenous languages but have not in all cases lost their ethnic identity or cultural vitality.

Much of the early intellectual impetus for the sociology of language was

provided by Joshua Fishman (e.g. Fishman 1971), who exposed the political and moral questions surrounding language and ethnic identity. Generally, sociolinguists have lobbied for ethnic and linguistic diversity,

not only as a universal and normal condition, but as a necessary and desirable one. A good deal of sociolinguistics has dealt with the problems suffered by minority language groups and threats to their survival, as for

example in Dorian’s research on language obsolescence (Dorian 1981, 1989). On the other hand, a good example of the stable coexistence of

language varieties within some communities is what Ferguson (1959) called a diglossic situation, when ‘high’ and ‘low’ language codes or dialects exist alongside each other in a community (e.g. classical Arabic vs.

a regional form of Arabic). In a diglossic community, political, religious and educational views and values are established and perpetuated.

Discussion

1. Labov (1970, p. 30) has described the sociology of language as

follows: It deals with large-scale social factors, and their mutual

interaction with languages and dialects. There are many open questions, and many practical problems associated with the decay

and assimilation of minority languages, the development of stable bilingualism, the standardization of languages and the planning of language development in newly emerging nations. The linguistic

input for such studies is primarily that a given person or group uses language X in a social context or domain Y. What are some of the ‘questions’ and ‘problems’ you see in your society, either broadly or

narrowly defined, that fall within such a sociology of language?

2. As a further instance of a topic that might be covered in the

sociology of language, consider who speaks English in the world, where, and for what purposes? You might also contrast what you

can find out about the uses of English with what you can find out about the uses of Latin, Swahili, French, Haitian Creole, Basque, and Esperanto.