Sociolinguistics

Sociolinguitics in Language Learning

By:Group 7

Name : 1. Raden Alifian Setiawan (A1D2 10 081)2. Mustika Marsani (A1D2 11 011)3. Syamsar Obe (A1D2 11 019)4. Rosmawati (A1D2 10 133)5. Sitti Iswatun (A1D2 10 028)6. Dian Indiani (A1D2 10 131)7. Gesang (A1D2 09 )

ENGLISH STUDY PROGRAMTEACHER TRAINING AND EDUCATIONAL FACULTY

HALU OLEO UNIVERSITYKENDARI

2014

A. What is Sociolinguistics ?

Sociolinguistics is the study of how language serves and is shaped by the social nature of

human beings. In its broadest conception, sociolinguistics analyzes the many and diverse ways in

which language and society entwine. This vast field of inquiry requires and combines insights

from a number of disciplines, including linguistics, sociology, psychology and anthropology.

Sociolinguistics can also be the descriptive study of the effect of any and all aspects

of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on the way language is used, and

the effects of language use on society. Sociolinguistics differs from sociology of language in that

the focus of sociolinguistics is the effect of the society on the language, while the sociology of

language focuses on language's effect on the society. Sociolinguistics overlaps to a considerable

degree with pragmatics. It is historically closely related to linguistic anthropology and the

distinction between the two fields has even been questioned recently.

It also studies how language varieties differ between groups separated by

certain social variables, e.g., ethnicity, religion, status, gender, level of education, age, etc., and

how creation and adherence to these rules is used to categorize individuals in social or

socioeconomic classes. As the usage of a language varies from place to place, language usage

also varies among social classes, and it is these sociolects that sociolinguistics studies.

Sociolinguistics examines the interplay of language and society, with language as the

starting point. Variation is the key concept, applied to language itself and to its use. The basic

premise of sociolinguistics is that language is variable and changing.  As a result, language is not

homogeneous — not for the individual user and not within or among groups of speakers who use

the same language.

By studying written records, sociolinguists also examine how language and society have

interacted in the past. For example, they have tabulated the frequency of the singular

pronoun thou and its replacement you in dated hand-written or printed documents and correlated

changes in frequency with changes in class structure in 16 th  and 17th  century England. This is

historical sociolinguistics: the study of relationship between changes in society and changes in

language over a period of time.

B. Language Learning

Language teaching is based on the idea that the goal of language acquisition is

communicative competence: the ability to use the language correctly and appropriately to

accomplish communication goals. The desired outcome of the language learning process is the

ability to communicate competently, not the ability to use the language exactly as a native

speaker does.

Communicative competence is made up of four competence areas: linguistic, sociolinguistic,

discourse, and strategic.

Linguistic competence is knowing how to use the grammar, syntax, and vocabulary of a

language. Linguistic competence asks: What words do I use? How do I put them into

phrases and sentences?

Sociolinguistic competence is knowing how to use and respond to language appropriately,

given the setting, the topic, and the relationships among the people communicating.

Sociolinguistic competence asks: Which words and phrases fit this setting and this topic?

How can I express a specific attitude (courtesy, authority, friendliness, respect) when I

need to? How do I know what attitude another person is expressing?

Discourse competence is knowing how to interpret the larger context and how to

construct longer stretches of language so that the parts make up a coherent whole.

Discourse competence asks: How are words, phrases and sentences put together to create

conversations, speeches, email messages, newspaper articles?

Strategic competence is knowing how to recognize and repair communication

breakdowns, how to work around gaps in one’s knowledge of the language, and how to

learn more about the language and in the context. Strategic competence asks: How do I

know when I’ve misunderstood or when someone has misunderstood me? What do I say

then? How can I express my ideas if I don’t know the name of something or the right

verb form to use?

In the early stages of language learning, instructors and students may want to keep in mind

the goal of communicative efficiency: That learners should be able to make themselves

understood, using their current proficiency to the fullest. They should try to avoid confusion in

the message (due to faulty pronunciation, grammar, or vocabulary); to avoid offending

communication partners (due to socially inappropriate style); and to use strategies for

recognizing and managing communication breakdowns.

C. Sociolinguistic Competence

Sociolinguistic Competence can be defined quite simply as: knowing and understanding

how to speak given the circumstances you are in. To go into more detail, when we speak in our

native language, we don’t have to think about who we are talking to, or how we should say

something. Our words typically come naturally, and we don’t even realize all the complexities

that go into the process. Although we often do not actively think about this process, it is a

essential part of effective communication. 

Second language learners, on the other hand, must learn how “to produce and understand

language in different sociolinguistic contexts, taking into consideration such factors as the status

of participants, the purposes of interactions, and the norms or conventions of interactions.”

(Freeman & Freeman, 2004) This is something that language learners must be taught and given

opportunities practice. This includes, but is not limited to: expressing attitude or emotion,

understanding formal vs. informal, and knowing/recognizing common slang or idiomatic

expressions. 

Sociolinguistic competence is the ability to interpret the social meaning of the choice of

linguistic varieties and to use language with the appropriate social meaning for the

communication situation.

Sociolinguistics is a very broad discipline and the term sociolinguistic competence could

be used much more broadly than it is here, where we have restricted its use to refer to the

recognition and use of appropriate varieties of language.

For examples, when greeting someone in a very formal situation an American might say,

Hello, how are you? or Nice to see you again, but if he were meeting a friend in an informal

situation it would be much more appropriate to say Hi, or Hey, whatcha been doing?

Sociolinguistic competence refers to individual’s knowledge of how to produce and

understand language in social situations. Language has a purpose, whether it is everyday

conversation, asking a question, persuading, or commanding. Speakers must know how to use

the language appropriately for any purpose. Sociolinguistic competence is not only conveying

messages but also understanding and interpreting social meanings. This includes considering

your audience, the formality of the situation, the purpose, and conventions.

D. Classroom Implication

Canale and Swain (1980) hypothesizes about “four components that make up the structure

of communicative competence” with the third being sociolinguistic competence (Asghari, n.d.).

Here language competence depends on the speaker’s ability to “produce and understand

language in different sociolinguistic contexts” ” (Diaz-Rico & Weed, 2010, p. 58).

One way that teachers can develop this competence is to “help learners use both the appropriate

forms and appropriate meanings when interacting in the classroom” ” (Diaz-Rico & Weed, 2010,

p. 58). All students need to be seen as “legitimate participants in order to access” language

through authentic learning experiences (Swain & Deters, 2007, p. 824). Here, students learn the

appropriate language to use in different social situations. 

Sentence walls, if used for this purpose, can foster developing sociolinguistic competence. This

teaching strategy allows ELL students the opportunity to “participate immediately in the

classroom learning activity and interact with their English-speaking peers (Carrier &Tatum,

2006, p.286). They can use language to accurate communicate academic concepts. 

Reciprocal teaching also develops sociolinguistic competence. Here, students assume the role of

the teacher. They ask questions, and scaffold “that help students understand what they are

reading” (Freeman & Freeman, 2001, p. 50). This support provides “a structure they can rely on

to build their competence (Freeman & Freeman, 2001, p. 82).

To develop sociolinguistic competence, teachers need to make sure that language experiences are

meaningful for students. This will help develop competence “because it is very difficult for

students to learn when content is not meaningful (Freeman & Freeman, 2001, p. 117). 

Merril Swain’s output hypothesis claims that one way for a language learner to acquire or

learn a new language is for them to produce language that “makes sense.” This hypothesis works

in conjunction with, not distinct from, her previous “input hypothesis,” which claimed that the

only way learners can acquire a new language is from hearing or reading the language being

learned in a way that it can be understood.

The output hypothesis is a key component of immersion and English-Only classrooms. In a

dual-immersion classroom, for example, students of two or more native languages (L1) learn the

other language(s) represented in the classroom by interacting with the teacher and with their

peers, all of whom use both languages in the classroom setting. As a result of being provided

both an opportunity to hear (input) the language being learned (L2), and being afforded ample

opportunity to produce (output) L2, students are more apt to acquire the new language in the

classroom setting.

Swain’s Output hypothesis has greater implications, however, for the English Language

Learner (ELL) in the English-Only classroom. Here, ELL students are thrust into a situation

where they know little or no English, yet English is the only language being used in the

classroom. As the student develops their ability to produce some of the new language, they find

themselves being subjected to encouragement to explore their new vocabulary, or “pushing”

from the teacher and their native-speaking peers. Pushing is used to describe situations where a

language learner is struggling to convey a message in L2, and the other party “pushes” them to

explain further using words they are familiar with in order to eventually arrive at the word(s)

they were originally seeking from their vocabulary.

As teachers in ESOL classrooms, we will be responsible for countless “pushing”

occurrences with our students. Swain proposes that our guidance in encouraging the learner to

seek their vocabulary for the right words will ultimately lead to a greater mastery and

understanding of L2, with the learner able to better remember and recall the words they are

looking for with ease. Also, according to Swain, the more influential reinforcement comes from

the teacher as opposed to L1 speaking peers, an observation which should serve to motivate us to

use our “pushing” skills more frequently than we may currently predict.

Students that come into our classrooms will have lived in different environments. The

language that they may be familiar with in their home or peer groups is often different then the

language used in the classroom. It is important for teachers to model appropriate forms and

meanings of language that we want our students to be using in the classroom. It may even call

for talking about how we act in school. Students may not know the appropriate way to respond.

Therefore, addressing the whole group could help this student understand without putting them

on the spot. For example a student from China may not know that speaking their own thoughts in

class or raising their hand in class to ask a question is appropriate in the classroom they are in.

For many Chinese students this sociolinguistic norm is foreign because their educational

background teaches that it is not appropriate to question your teacher in front of the whole class.

For teachers to be aware of their students’ background will aid them in helping their language

learners understand how to use language that is both appropriate and understand the interactions

within our classrooms.

E. How Do We Learn Sociolinguistic Competence in Language Learning?

The process of learning sociolinguistic competence is challenging even in one’s first

language. Evidence of this can be found in the popularity of "Miss Manners" columns. If we all

had perfect sociolinguistic competence, we wouldn’t need advice about the proper way to send

wedding invitations or give a dinner party. Having good sociolinguistic competence means

knowing how to "give every person his or her due." It means knowing when to be quiet, and

when to talk, when to give compliments to others, and when to apologize. It also means being

able to read situations and know what is the right thing to say or do. There are an infinite number

of combinations of roles, tasks, contexts, and feelings that govern what is appropriate in any

given encounter. For example, the job of persuading a friend to go with you to a concert will

require completely different skills than trying to persuade the president of the company to begin

selling a new product line. 

Good sociolinguistic skills in a second language are important because if you make serious

mistakes in this type of competence, people will not simply think that you are ignorant (which

they may think if you have poor grammar); rather, they will think that you are ill-mannered,

dishonest, insincere, rude, pushy, etc. If your grammar is excellent, you will be judged all the

more severely for sociolinguistic gaffes. Misunderstandings result in amusement, contempt,

disappointment, shock, bewilderment, serious insult, or ethnic stereotypes.

Improving sociolinguistic competence needs to be a part of the language learning process

from the beginning. Many language schools and language learning programs focus almost

exclusively on language components such grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation, and very

little attention is paid to helping students understand how to be appropriate in a new cultural

context. An assumption is often made that language learners will pick up sociolinguistic

competence simply by being exposed to the culture. Unfortunately, this is not often the case.

The following are some suggestions for increasing one’s sociolinguistic competence. These

suggestions are applicable not just for those living abroad, but also for those who need to interact

and work with people from other cultural backgrounds:

1. Learners need to take individual responsibility for seeing that this dimension of the

language learning process is included in their program of study from the beginning.

When an individual takes responsibility for this part of the language learning process, he or

she is in a good position to develop meaningful relationships with members of the target

culture. These relationships can lay a foundation for meaningful language learning for years

to come. By taking language learning into their own hands, language learners are assured

that their learning will not end when their formal instruction comes to a close (often long

before learners are fluent in their target languages).

2. Language learners need to remember that sociolinguistic competence is part of a larger

system.

When learning new grammatical structures, the learner should immediately try to practice

the new structures with the goal of testing sociolinguistic appropriateness. Some learners

have even gone so far as to deliberately say something wrong so that native speakers would

correct them, and they would learn something new about what was appropriate.

3. As language learners become more proficient in a second language, they also need to be

increasingly committed to becoming observers of the interactions of native speakers

around them.

They should watch how people stand when talking to each other. They should watch for the

kinds of physical touching people do (handshaking, kissing, gentle punches on the shoulder,

etc.) Are such things influenced by the gender of the speakers? How does language change

when someone important enters a room? By knowing what to look for, learners can discover

a great deal through observation.

4. Another suggestion for developing sociolinguistic competence is to keep a language

journal which records questions, problems, and discoveries.

If there is some feature of the target language which is troubling or frustrating to a language

learner, it may be the key to an insight about the communication process. For example, what

led to Berry’s (1994) study of backchannel behavior and turn-taking was an unsettling

feeling that all Spanish speakers were rude to her, never letting her complete a sentence or

express a thought without interruption. Her initial reaction was a judgment that Spanish

speakers were rude, but because that was an unacceptable conclusion for her, she pursued

the topic until she realized that Spanish speakers expect co-speakers to begin speaking

before they finish as a means of demonstrating interest. Far from being rude and pushy, the

listeners were trying to show their engagement in the conversation. 

It is, of course, possible that a few people intend to be rude, but when it seems like everyone,

including friends, are acting rude, it is time to explore one’s definition of rudeness to see if

an underlying sociolinguistic expectation is not being met. In general, if it seems as though

some characteristic of the way speakers of the target language are communicating is

routinely offensive, one should begin looking for a sociolinguistic explanation. There is a

good chance that the reverse is also true—what seems natural in the learner’s first language

may be offensive to speakers of the target language.

5. The process of building sociolinguistic competence will not go far without the language

learners establishing relationships with a few people who are native speakers of the

target language and have lived most if not all of their lives in the target culture.

These people will be essential to discovery of the sociolinguistic dimensions of language.

When language learners acquire new lexical items and grammatical forms. It is vital that

they examine with their language helpers the kinds of changes which would be made to the

new language data as a result of changes in the context. If they have learned something new,

they can ask a language helper, "Could I say this to a man? to a woman? Would I say this to

a teacher? to a neighbor?" etc. Or, if the language helper is also sensitive to the kinds of

restrictions which might apply to a given utterance, a more general question might be

sufficient: "Should I avoid saying this with any particular group of people or in any

context?" Also, if language learners are able to find more than one helper, and if they are

fairly confident in the appropriateness of an utterance, they might try out the utterance on a

number of different individuals to see if there is any adverse reaction.

The importance of language helpers as a resource for building sociolinguistic competence

cannot be over stressed. In many cases, the only way to understand what is happening

sociolinguistically will be through the insights of language helpers. However, one should try

to avoid being frustrated when it seems that language helpers offer contradictory advice on

sociolinguistic issues. It is essential to test the language one is learning in different contexts

with different kinds of people, and it is very helpful to get feedback from language helpers

who can offer differing insights and interpretations, but it should not be surprising that in an

enterprise as dynamic and human as using language, generalizations may be more

complicated than they initially appear.

If contradictory explanations of appropriate behavior seem to be emerging, one explanation

for it may be that the language learner has not recognized some higher-level generalization

or framework which encompasses both contradictory statements. For example, if one helper

says that an utterance is acceptable without qualifications and another finds what is said to

be highly offensive, then there must be a variable at work which explains the apparent

contradiction. Perhaps the two helpers come from different regions of the same country, and

in one region the utterance is acceptable, while in the other it is not. The helper who comes

from the area in which the utterance is acceptable may be completely unaware that the

utterance in question is offensive elsewhere.

Along similar lines, it is also important to recognize that within any society, even a society

which shares only one language, there is always variation in the speech produced by

individual speakers. This variation, in itself, can account for differences in the advice

language helpers might give.

Another explanation for contradictory explanations may be found in the imaginations of

different helpers. When a person is asked for a comment about the appropriateness of a

given utterance, he or she usually tries to form a scenario in his or her mind in which the

utterance would be used. If two (or more) helpers imagine a scenario for the same utterance,

they will almost certainly come up with scenarios which are different, and the differences in

their imagined scenarios will influence their perception of the appropriateness of the

utterance. For example, if one takes a sentence like, "You’re getting so skinny!", it is

possible for one helper to imagine a case in which this sentence is spoken in an American

context to a friend who is trying to lose weight, in which case it might be viewed as an

appropriate comment. On the other hand, if a helper imagined the sentence being spoken to

someone in an American context who had a serious problem with trying to gain weight (i.e.,

he or she was too thin already), this expression could be viewed as an insult. Because

decisions of appropriateness are so contextually constrained, it is very easy to get

contradictory advice from different language helpers.

A fourth consideration in this vein is the possibility that the language helper may be lacking

in sociolinguistic competence in his or her own first language. Native speakers of any

language have different levels of sensitivity to sociolinguistic considerations. If it seems as

though one language helper consistently gives different answers from the rest of a language

learner’s contacts, it is possible that the different language helper is either not as competent

as the others or is simply not able to perceive such issues as accurately. Of course, it is

possible that the one who differs is the only one with insight, but if one finds that the advice

of one particular helper consistently results in awkward or painful situations, it is probably

best to seek for help in other quarters.

6. As one way to bring together the suggestions made above, language learners should

make a focused effort to learn the speech acts they need in order to function in the

target language.

(Speech acts are the things people do with language such as apologize, invite, accept and

refuse invitations, compliment, sympathize, complain.) They should then assess the kinds of

variables which will influence the performance of specific speech acts, and discuss the

speech acts with their language helpers. Finally, working with their helpers, they can

practice the language and skills they are learning.

Summary

Sociolinguistics is the study of how language serves and is shaped by the social nature of

human beings. In its broadest conception, sociolinguistics analyzes the many and diverse ways in

which language and society entwine. Language teaching is based on the idea that the goal of

language acquisition is communicative competence: the ability to use the language correctly and

appropriately to accomplish communication goals. Communicative competence is made up of

four competence areas: linguistic, sociolinguistic, discourse, and strategic.

Sociolinguistic Competence can be defined quite simply as: knowing and understanding

how to speak given the circumstances you are in. Sociolinguistic competence is the ability to

interpret the social meaning of the choice of linguistic varieties and to use language with the

appropriate social meaning for the communication situation. To develop sociolinguistic

competence, teachers need to make sure that language experiences are meaningful for students.

This will help develop competence “because it is very difficult for students to learn when content

is not meaningful.

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