Introduction - Routledge

1 Chapter 1 IntroductionWHAT IS SOCIOLINGUISTICS?If I had a penny for every time I have tried to answer the question, So what issociolinguistics? ,I would be writing this book in the comfort of an early retirement. And if there was a way ofdefining it in one simple, yet comprehensive, sentence, there might not be a need for weightyintroductory is a very broad field, and it can be used to describe many different waysof studying language. A lot of linguists might describe themselves as sociolinguists, but thepeople who call themselves sociolinguists may have rather different interests from eachother and they may use very different methods for collecting and analysing data. This can beconfusing if you are coming new to the field. Is sociolinguistics about how individual speakersuse language? Is it about how people use language differently in different towns or regions?Is it about how a nation decides what languages will be recognised in courts or education?

2 The answer is: yes, yes, and yes. Sociolinguists conduct research on any of those example, if a speaker describes a funny or amusing situation as kicksin , I know they arefrom, or have spent a good deal of time in, the English-speaking Caribbean. I am drawing onsociolinguistic (social and linguistic) knowledge to draw this take the case of Jennifer, who grew up in a small traditionally fishing village in thenorth-east of Scotland, but spent many years teaching English in Greece. Jennifer can drawon a number of different styles or ways of speaking, depending on who she is talking to. Ifher interlocutor is a member of her family, she still uses a variety of Scots which is virtuallyincomprehensible to other native speakers of English. She says fit instead of what ; na instead of don t ; doon instead of down ; be er instead of better , and so forth. But in Greeceshe quickly learnt that she needed to adopt a less regionally marked way of speaking if herstudents were going to understand her, and when she later began attending professionalconferences with an international audience, she had the same experience.

3 Everyone canmodify the way they speak depending on who they are with or what the situation is. Whenthey do this, they are drawing on their sociolinguistic knowledge. And every time they changethe way they speak, depending on their interlocutor or situation, they provide more sociolin-guistic information that builds up the sociolinguistic knowledge in the DO SOCIOLINGUISTS STUDY SOCIOLINGUISTICS?Sociolinguists use a range of methods to analyse patterns of language in use and attitudestowards language in use. Some sociolinguistic patterns can only be observed systematically Miriam Meyerhoff Miriam Meyerhoffthrough close examination of lots of recorded speech and a good understanding about thespeaker s background or place in a the other hand, sociolinguists who are interested in investigating national languagepolicies might never need to use any audio or video recordings at all.

4 A lot of relevantinformation on language planning can be gleaned from library and archive materials, or frommore free-form discussions with members of the communities being studied. For example,official newspaper reports and letters to the editor provide the researcher with a range ofperspectives just in one major challenge that sociolinguists face is that a lot of the time speakers are completelyunaware of the ways in which language is used differently in different contexts. Or if theyare aware, they can only talk about it in very general terms. For example, when dialectologistswant to find out where one traditional local dialect begins and ends, they can often ask peopledirectly. It s not unheard of for people to be able to identify (correctly) the village or eventhe house! where people stop using one pronunciation of the word for child and startusing another pronunciation.

5 But when sociolinguists try to get people to discuss the differentways they use language, the answers they get are typically more vague: Of course I changethe way I speak. How? I don t know, lots of ways .. So sociolinguists have devised a numberof different methods for getting at these semi-conscious or subconscious norms. We willexamine a number of such methods in this BROADER CONNECTIONSAs well as differing in the kinds of methods they use, different kinds of sociolinguists mayhave different goals what they want their research to shed light on, or how they hope itmight change the field. This book also tries to make these kinds of issues clear to order to do this, it stops at various points to comment explicitly on relevant theoreticalissues raised by the data or methods being discussed at that point. I feel this is very importantfor a number of reasons. The first is that students often have the opportunity to take onlyone sociolinguistics course in an undergraduate linguistics degree.

6 This means it is particularlyhelpful if they can see quickly as the subject unfolds where and how sociolinguists mighthave something to contribute to or learn from descriptive or theoretical second reason is that many people take sociolinguistics as an outside subjectwhile they are pursuing a degree in another field, languages, social anthropology,sociology, media studies, or communication. For these students, it is even more imperativethat an Introduction to sociolinguistics provides them with both the basic findings and linguisticinsights of the field, and also an immediate sense of how and where sociolinguistic researchintersects with and can inform research in their major third reason is even more pragmatic. In a sense, each of the boxes in the text that offera Connection with Theory represents one attempt to answer the question I started out with: So what issociolinguistics?

7 sociolinguistic QUESTIONSEven though sociolinguistics wears many caps, one thing linking all of the practitioners in thefield is that they are all interested in how people use language and what they use it for. Inother words, sociolinguists are not only interested in documenting the different forms ofINTRODUCTION2 Miriam Meyerhoff Miriam Meyerhofflanguage what it looks like and how it is structured but also want to answer questionslike:nWho uses those different forms or language varieties? nWho do they use them with? nAre they aware of their choice? nWhy do some forms or languages win out over others? (And is it always the sameones?)nIs there any relationship between the forms in flux in a community of speakers?nWhat kind of social information do we ascribe to different forms in a language or differentlanguage varieties?nHow much can we change or control the language we use?

8 This is what we mean when we say that sociolinguists are interested in both social questionsand linguistic questions. Inevitably, some sociolinguistics research has more to say aboutsocial issues, and some sociolinguistics research has more to say about linguistic matters,but what makes someone s work distinctively sociolinguistic will be the fact that, regardlessof its emphasis, it has something to say about both linguistic structure and social OF THIS BOOKThis book introduces some of the different ways in which sociolinguists research languagein use. It looks at the ways in which people use language and how these are related to larger issues of social structure. You will find that it is structured rather differently from other introductions to sociolinguistics, and sometimes discusses classic sociolinguisticstudies from a novel perspective. However, its structure reflects what I have found works bestafter nearly twenty years of involvement in teaching sociolinguistics to undergraduate and(post-)graduate classes.

9 It also directly reflects the extremely helpful feedback and adviceabout structuring a one-semester course in sociolinguistics that I have received from of its more radical departures from most sociolinguistics texts is that it starts byproviding the reader with a very firm grounding in research showing how speakers uselanguage to present themselves to others and to identify or differentiate themselves fromothers. This includes variation in the form of an individual s choice of language as well as theiruse of different styles, or repertoires, in a language. In my experience, starting with theindividual, and then working through other sociolinguistic topics, has a number of teachingadvantages. First, it makes the subject matter directly accessible and relevant to I have noted, people are generally aware of their potential to use language differently indifferent social contexts, but they lack the means of articulating this sociolinguistic first half of this book provides them with the means to articulate what they already knowthrough personal , I feel that by gradually expanding the focus from the way individuals uselanguage to the way groups of individuals use language enables students to see more clearlywhat the connections are between sociolinguistics and contact between dialects andlanguages.

10 Most introductory sociolinguistics texts either finesse this link or add it in as a chapter that is only minimally connected to the larger picture of language in use. The goal of this book is to provide readers with a sense of the seamless connections betweenINTRODUCTION3 Miriam Meyerhoff Miriam Meyerhoffindividual speakers and varieties of languages. When readers subsequently choose tospecialise or focus their attention on one part of the continuum (as we all must), they willnevertheless do so with a clear sense of how their work fits into a broader social and/orlinguistic addition to the connections with theory, readers will find two other forms of digression in this text. Exercises are provided in order to consolidate through practice the informationthat has just been discussed in the text. These are not intended as test questions; I haveinterleaved them with the text because they are designed to take the reader a little further(sometimes anticipating material which follows later).