Introduction to Sociolinguistics UNIT 1 1 INTRODUCTION: KEY CONCEPTS IN SOCIOLINGUISTICS: Language is used to convey meaning, it is used for a number of things

s other than transmitting a verbal message, among them, to initiate, maintain and preserve social relationships with other members of the society. Language should be understood as a social phenomenon that relates the speakers to their social environment and their kinship to other members of the speech community, Sociolinguistics deals with the relation between language and society. It copes with the links that can be found between one or more languages and their users who live within a specific speech community. Sociolinguistics examines the social and linguistic patterns that govern our behavior as members of human society and how they affect interaction. Chomsky was concerned with the ideal speaker/listener communication in a completely homogenous speech community who knows the language as a native speaker. Dell Hymes termed the Communicative Competence that refers not only to the human ability to use the language in different situations and under different circumstances but it also refers to other nonlinguistic aspects which are also part of the communication process, such as: silence, turn-taking, volume, amount of talk, word choice, gestures, etc. 2 SOCIOLINGUISTICS VS. SOCIOLOGY OF LANGUAGE: Sociolinguistics is to investigate and describe the relationship between language and society and the stress is placed on language and its role within communication. It may try to analyze specific differences of a group of speakers in a speech community at a micro level. It can also refer to a macro level and in that case what interests the researchers is language variation as a human phenomenon that affects large parts of the population. Sociology of language, centers on the study of society and how we can understand it through the study of language, that is, how we can understand sociolinguistic behavior by means of the study of linguistic features. Micro-sociolinguistics involves the use of a language as a whole together with another cultural phenomenon that determines the use of language, whereas macro-sociolinguistics deals with language planning, language policy, etc. 3 THE ORIGINS OF SOCIOLINGUISTICS: Sociolinguistics has spread in the last thirty years together with other branches of linguistics such as psycholinguistics, pragmatics and applied linguistics which, far from having a descriptive or historical approach to language such as pure or traditional linguistics (syntax, phonetics, etc.) 1

Introduction to Sociolinguistics maintain an interest in the interdisciplinary of the field and the contribution of other branches of the humanities to linguistics, such as: psychology, pragmatics, history, gender studies, etc. This new branch of linguistics emerged together with other developments of applied linguistics and was often considered a step child, until it finally became a consolidated fully acknowledged field of research. It comprises various areas of study and research like historical and comparative linguistics, dialectology, and anthropology. Nowadays, sociolinguistics is not only a truly consolidated discipline but it can be divided into subfields, such as pragmatics, language gender studies, pidgin and creole studies, language planning and policy studies, and education of linguistic minority studies, etc. 4 VARIATION: From a sociolinguistic point of view the most important source of information is the way social and situational factors affect language and make it vary. One of the first features that can sometimes be identified is the origin. Differences are associated, within a specific speech community, with social, economical, political, religious, cultural or any other situational background. In terms of power relationships the way people use the language is affected by the social connection between them. A speaker can vary his/her speech in some degree, especially to adhere to certain social, economic, religious, etc. class, but s/he cannot vary it beyond certain limits otherwise s/he would be ungrammatical and/or incomprehensible. It would be necessary to point out that linguistic norms are quite often more understated than other social conventions, such as table manners, therefore, harder to describe, or even perceive. Social conventions are usually learned or acquired during childhood and adolescence but these rules can vary from culture to culture and as languages often reflect the way their users understand and perceive their lives. So, Sociolinguistics deals specially with variation, among groups, among situations and among places, and the task of the sociolinguist is to find regular patterns of variation in use. 5 SOME INSTANCES OF VARIATION: Labov states that style shifting is usually correlated to the amount of attention that the speaker pays to his speech. Some markers characterize an ethnic linguistic variety. Word choice also determines style shifting as the linguistic domain (home, neighborhood, job, church, store, school, etc.) settles the degree of formality in the words used as well as the amount of colloquialisms in a speakers speech. 2

Introduction to Sociolinguistics 6 DIACHRONIC VARIATION: Languages are in a constant flux because people use them endlessly and the continuous use makes them change. Pronunciation also changes in all languages. The Danish scholar Rasmus Rask and his follower the German linguist Jacob Grimm in the first quarter of the 19th century succeeded in showing the relationship between Germanic and the classical Indo-European languages. Another area of linguistic change is syntax. Syntactic change affects the pattern of sentences. English has become an analytic language. Semantic change offers the most obvious instances as it is one of the most sensible areas in this respect, as even in short periods of time words may vary their meanings total or partially because they are closely connected with everyday usage and the contemporary culture. There are changes in meaning and use. Change of meaning is closely related to social changes. Semantic change can be derived into generalization or specification. Words can be borrowed from other languages, new words can be coined or invented, and new terms can be created by means of derivation and compounding of existing words. Native words can pass out and be replaced by words from other languages or dialects. There is also semantic differentiation of originally synonyms, native words and loans. 7 SPEECH COMMUNITY: For general linguistics, a speech community is a group of people that share the same language or dialect in a specific setting which can be close, such as a city or a neighborhood; or broad, such as a whole country. Sociolinguistics take the issue a bit more complex given the fact that societal and extra linguistic factors are taken into account: verbal repertoire and the role repertoire. The definition of speech community needs to be sufficiently flexible and abstract to include social groupings as dissimilar as neighborhoods and countries as speech communities. A basic component for a speech community is the fact of sharing at least one language, and therefore, the term refers to a group of people that could communicate in the same language. It is important to take into account that speech communities do not necessarily correspond with political boundaries, religions or cultures. Languages are often used by groups of people that share a physical context but also a number of social norms. The relationship among members of a speech community allows the categorization of differences among the several users and variation according to certain social conditionings such as age, gender, job, educational background, etc. These groups of people share at least one language or variety and also some rules and norms for the correct use in communication. 3

Introduction to Sociolinguistics Kachru distinguished four types of speech communities: a) A multilingual speech community recognizes more than two official languages. In Multilingual countries a contact language is commonly adopted as an official language for practical purposes. b) A bilingual speech community acknowledges two languages with an official status. c) A monolingual speech community has only one official language. Monolingual speakers can also have a repertoire of styles, registers or dialects that may be utterly different from the standard. d) A diglossic community would be the one where two languages or varieties are functionally complementary. Diglossia often distinguishes between two varieties; one which is used in formal contexts (high variety) and one that is used in colloquial speech (low variety). Spolsky: the speech community has no limitation of location or size but it entails a complex interlocking network of communication, their members sharing the knowledge of language use patters as well as attitudes towards others and themselves, and also sharing a set of language varieties (or repertoires) and norms for using them. 8 DOING SOCIOLINGUISTIC RESEARCH: Language is used depending on the interlocutors social or geographic background and other factors such as age, sex or education. This means that every speaker will show some degree of stylistic variation depending on (a) the relations of power or solidarity with the interlocutor; (b) the social context (domain) where the conversation is taking place: at home, in school, at the working place, neighborhood; and (c) the topic: academic, professional, trifling. Sociolinguistics at work are looking for commonly accepted rules and patterns that account for variations in speech based on some determining factors such as age, gender, level of education, place of origin, etc. and also depending on the nature of the encounter. It is necessary to get reliable information about the linguistic phenomenon which has ecological validity, i.e. it represents a true sample of the way communication takes place without any type of interference on the part of the researcher. Sociolinguistic research is based on the collection of large amounts of data and the later statistical analysis of this data in order to find general tendencies or regularities. Nonetheless, there is some tension between quantitative and qualitative approaches to sociolinguistic research. Ethnographers follow a different approach, they base their research on case studies and that is why they carefully observe single cases and they

Introduction to Sociolinguistics contrast the patterns of behavior that they find with those of other communities or societies. UNIT 2 1 SOME VARIABLE IN SOCIOLINGUISTICS: 1.1.- STYLE: Even within a specific speech community individuals have a range of choices when they speak in terms of word choice, syntactic complexity and even subtle pronunciation features. Every individual has a typical way in which s/he does things and the same applies to any aspect of human behavior. Stylistic variation can be found in other areas of more interest to sociolinguistics; for example, you can speak very formally or very informally given certain circumstances and situations. This implies a specific choice on the part of the speaker as s/he will probably choose formal language for solemn events, less formal language for everyday situations and really informal and casual language for trivial conversations or relaxed matters. As a result, the speaker can decide on a level of formality depending on a number of factors such as the particular occasion, social differences, the interlocutors age and other determining factors such as the type of discourse chose, i.e., written or spoken. As a result of the long literary tradition in most cultures, especially western, the question of style has often been associated with the study of literary writing. Nevertheless, style is linked in a consistent way to all linguistic behavior, whether written or spoken, and regardless of whether the speaker/writer is deemed to be a literary figure. 1.2. REGISTER: Another variable that is at the speakers disposal and that is caught up with style is register. As register is a set of language features, mainly the choice of lexical items or syntactic ordering of utterances, whose use tends to be associated with a specific interest group as in the case of professionals with a particular occupation and, often, a particular working context: doctors, air traffic controllers, lawyers, computer enthusiasts, etc. This type of variation is characterized by the circumstance and purpose of the communicative situation and contrasts with variation by individual user, geographical or socio-economic variation. Specialization is encouraged and the flourishing number of technical words and acronyms sometimes makes it difficult for a lay person to follow a conversation on any topic that requires a specific register. Apart from specific language domains, register is socially motivated as it entails a social

Introduction to Sociolinguistics negotiation among the participants in order to accommodate the adequate register either in written or spoken discourse. Register can be conceived from two different perspectives. In the narrow sense of the word, register refers to the type of language used by a group of professionals who employ certain linguistic features which are not used, or at least not so commonly, in other settings. This conception of register is closely related to jargon, and tends to be associated with word choice rather that syntactic ordering. On the other hand, in a broad sense of the word, register can be understood as a social genre, a sociolect, that bears upon lexical choice and syntactic ordering, and could be exemplified in the language of newspaper articles, academic prose or legal language. Registers can be depicted by means of 3 main dimensions: a) Field, which related to the social activity performed, the setting and the aim of interaction. b) Tenor, which refers to the social roles enacted and the relationship between the participants. c) Mode, which refers to the medium of the language in that situation. 1.3. GENDER: There is indeed some evidence that marks language as sexist, or rather their users, and that both sexes do not speak the same way and that cannot only be attributed to stylistic or individual differences. It should be pointed out that language should not be considered as inherently sexist but it is used in a sexist way or even that it reflects a sexist world. Trudgill in a study carried out in Norwich (England) found out that women tended to be more conservative in terms of language use, as men were reported to show most language change. He studied phonological and sociological variable and he also discovered that women are generally more status-conscious than men. Traditionally, the term sex has been used to refer to biological and anatomical differences between men and women, and gender has been used to refer to psychological and socio-cultural differences between the sexes. This approach, although clear and simple enough to categorize profound differences between males and females proves to be little simplistic for sociolinguistic research, as one of the aims of sociolinguistics is to describe the relation between these two, i.e., sex and gender. Sex is a biological category which constitutes the base for the differentiation of roles, norms and expectations within a certain speech community, and these social roles, norms and expectations compose the idea or gender. Recent studies have shown neurophysical differences in the way males and females process language. It seems that phonological processing in males relates to the left hemisphere of the brain whereas it involves both 6

Introduction to Sociolinguistics hemispheres in the case of females. However, no evidence has been shown that such biological differences have an effect on male-female language processing and speech; any dissimilarity seems to be a result of social factors, educational factors, or power. 2 SPEECH ACCOMMODATION: Speech accommodation consists of the modification of ones own speech or other communicative behaviors to the ones used by the person one is interacting with. This way of adjusting ones own speech can give way to speech convergence or speech divergence depending on the intentions of the speakers and the results of the communication encounter. Doctors, lawyers and therapists can accommodate their speech as part of their job when communicating with clients, or to show empathy. Adjusting to a given register or style is also a way of accommodating speech to take advantage of intra-group inclusion. Speech convergence shows a speakers or a groups need for social integration and/or identification with another or others. Research has shown that converging speech accommodation can increase the speakers perceived (a) attractiveness; (b) predictability and supportiveness; (c) level of interpersonal involvement; (d) intelligibility and comprehensibility; and, (e) the speakers ability to gain their listeners compliance.

UNIT 3 1 PIDGIN AND CREOLIZATION: Pidginization is a process that sometimes takes place when two languages come into contact and, as a result, there is a process of simplification or hybridization. Often, the words from one language are adopted while using the syntactic ordering of the other language, but, as a rule the grammatical system is simplified as well as other complex linguistic features. Pidgins have been used for centuries and eventually, some of them, became creoles. The process of creolization takes place when that language that was originally a functional language used only for purposeful communication is acquired as a mother tongue by children who are exposed to it. The social circumstances in which this language is now used are more complex as they need to serve all kinds of social needs to communicative purposes and, therefore, the language expands. In such a situation, the pidgin develops and becomes more complex both in terms of grammar and phonology and its use then covers all kinds of communicative functions. The pidgins involve some kind of simplification, in terms of lexis, grammar and phonological features, whereas the creoles entail the expansion in all 7

Introduction to Sociolinguistics kinds of linguistic features and communicative functions. This amplification becomes apparent because the language which originally had limited functions becomes now a system used as a native language that needs to be used for all types of social functions. Originally, pidgins served the purpose of a lingua franca, i.e., a language used by people who speak different mother tongues and who used a common language for a specific functional situation, such as trade. 2 SOME INSTANCES OF PIDGINS: Most pidgins and creoles are based on an European language, and the most common and widespread ones are based on one of the following languages: English, German, Dutch, French, Spanish or Italian. Pidgins are to be found all over the world but, they tend to share a number of general characteristics. These are some of them: a) Almost complete lack of inflection in nouns, pronouns, verbs and adjectives. b) Nouns are unmarked for number and gender. c) Verbs lack tense markers. d) There is no distinction for case in personal pronouns, so I can stand for me, and they for them. e) Syntactically, the absence of clausal structures is quite common in pidgins. However, relative clauses and other types of embedding develop in creolization. f) In order to avoid possible confusion, as there is often no distinction between long and short vowels (e.g., ship and sheep would be pronounced in the same way), a common resource introduced in these languages is reduplication. For example, in Tok Psisin sip means ship and sipsip means sheep, as pis means peace while pispis has the meaning of urinate. Another common usage of reduplication is to intensify the meaning of a word, for instance, cry means cry whereas crycry means cry continually, or talk meaning talk and talktalk meaning chatter. 3 SOME INSTANCES OF CREOLES: The British Empire spread all over the world for around 350 years and this favoured the expansion of Standard English and regional varieties overseas, on the one hand, but also the creation and development of many pidgins and creoles in different parts of the globe, on the other. As a matter of fact there have been more English-based creoles than in other languages such as French, Portuguese or Spanish.

Introduction to Sociolinguistics Hawaiian Creole English: Over 600.000 people in Hawaii speak Hawaiian Creole English (HCE). HCE is mainly in a complex sociolinguistic situation because, as often happens with pidgins and creoles, it was denigrated repeatedly in schools and public administrations for years but more and more often it is turning into a way to express solidarity and forge local identity. Jamaican Patwa (or Patois): As a result of not having an official status, a name for the creole language used mainly in Jamaica has not been fixed to the present day and some terms like Jamaican, Jamaican Creole, Jamaican Patwa or Patois are all used. Over 90% of the 25 million population of Jamaica in the late 1990s are descendants of slaves brought from Africa. Nowadays, this language has not got much social and socioeconomic status in Jamaica and it largely represents the speech of the peasant and laborer with little education. It is not considered an acceptable language for formal purposes and speakers are often considered as socially and linguistically inferior. Tok Pisin: Papua New Guinea has three official languages which turn to be second languages to most people: Hiri Motu, Tok Pisin and English. Tok Pisin (TP) is used nowadays by three million people as a unifying language, and lingua franca, among speakers of a number of different indigenous languages Papua New Guinea. This language, which remains very distant to English, is sometimes used as a pidgin and sometimes as a Creole and shows clear influences from English in terms of borrowings, subordination patterns, plural forms, etc. In 1975 Papua New Guinea was born and TP was recognized in the constitution as one of the national languages. 4 DECREOLIZATION: Creoles, as any other living language, continue to evolve. There is a phenomenon called decreolization that arises when one creole has a prolongued contact with a standard language in a specific society, and that standard brings a considerable influence to bear on the creole. So, speakers start to develop the creole taking the standard as a model and a continuum is created with the standard as a model at the top and the creole as a model at the bottom. Varieties that are closer to the standard often become the language of the elite and educated society (acrolect), whereas the variety which is closer to the creole often represents illiterate people and lower social class (basilect). Between these two poles there can appear a whole range of varieties or mesolects which determine not only social stratification but also alleged identities among their speakers. 5 THE USE OF PIDGINS AND CREOLES IN EDUCATION: 9

Introduction to Sociolinguistics It is rather uncommon to find a pidgin or creole, or other minority dialect, as the language of instruction in formal education in any educational system in the world, and Valdman considers that this is for two reasons. On the one hand, the continuum of variation that is usually found between the pidgin/creole and the standard educational language represents a strong obstacle as it is sometimes difficult to isolate a particular norm to be used in education. On the other hand, the social consideration of the pidgin/creole is in a way hindered by the fact that it is frequently considered as deviant from the standard and as having an inferior status in the speech community. Siegel affirms that speakers of creoles and minority dialects generally do not do well in the formal education system. In some cases this can be caused by socio-economic factors but on some other occasions it seems clear that language plays a role. Very often, these speakers are in a way disadvantaged because the language of formal education is actually a standard variety that they do not speak as a mother tongue. Pidgins and creoles are gaining social and political recognition and their acknowledgement as part of the social identity in many parts of the world is now a fact. In the last decades there has been a global attempt to legitimize the use of pidgins, creoles and minority dialects in formal education claiming that the speakers of these languages have a right to express their own linguistic and sociocultural identity in their own languages. SEIGEL points out that this enthusiasm for using pidgins, creoles and minority dialects in formal education had to face some obstacles such as the following: 1. Negative attitudes and ignorance on the part of the teachers who, especially in immigration settings, may mistake language problems of creole-speaking children for cognitive problems and eventually lower their expectations of these students. 2. Negative attitudes and self-image of the students themselves because of denigration of their speech and culture. 3. Repression of self-expression because of the need to use an unfamiliar form of language. 4. Difficulty in acquiring literacy in a second language or dialect. Pidgins, creoles and minority dialects have been used in three types of educational programs. These three types are: the instrumental program that is characterized by the use of the home variety as the medium of instruction, so it is used as a vehicle for the acquisition of initial literacy and the learning of other subjects in the curriculum. The standard language is therefore introduced at a later stage and it gradually becomes the language of instruction for some subjects. The accommodation program does allow the use of the home language and its use is not penalized in any way but it is, however, not employed as the language of instruction for any subject nor it is studied as a language in itself. The awareness program includes in 10

Introduction to Sociolinguistics the curriculum some teaching on basic sociolinguistic and sociopragmatic principles of different language varieties, and their grammatical rules and pragmatics are compared with those of the standard variety. UNIT 4 1 - BILINGUALISM: INTRODUCTION: In many places around the world, people use more than one language every day, because of situational factors as well as their sociolinguistic situation. Bilingualism is not restricted to some countries or areas traditionally considered bilingual such as Canada or Switzerland, but is present in every country of the world in one way or the other. So, using one language at home and another one at work is not very strange in some places. The second language does not need to have been learned formally; speakers may just have acquired it by constant exposure to the language, and the shift from one code to the other is often unconscious. Bilingualism can range from a functional ability to use one language only in certain domains, to balanced bilingualism which entails an equal and highlevel capacity in two or more languages. In order to portray the different features of bilingualism, some aspects need to be described: 1. It is important to take into account the means of acquisition, and this would depend on whether each of the languages was acquires as a mother tongue, a second language or a foreign language. Each of these circumstances radically affects the degree of attainment and the overall proficiency, depending on the age of the speaker and the amount of time spent learning and using the language. 2. The skills in each language may vary as it is perfectly possible, to have different commands of the various skills: reading, writing, speaking and listening comprehension. 3. There are certain functions that bilinguals generally prefer to perform in one language than in the other. This may be due to the fact that they have not developed a specific skill in that language sufficiently or just because it seems more natural for them to do it in a certain language. 4. The domain often influences language choice in bilingual speakers because the acquisition or learning was domain-dependent or simply because one language is preferred in some contexts and it is subjected to the effect of three main factors: a) location, b) the role relationship among the interlocutors and c) the topics involved in the conversation. 2 BILINGUIALISM: DEFINITIONS AND DIMENSIONS:

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Introduction to Sociolinguistics Broadly speaking the study and depiction of bilingualism can give prominence either to the social side of this phenomenon, as it stems from a context in which various languages are in contact; or it can pay closer attention to the individual and psycholinguistic side of the issue, as the languages involved interact and develop in the brain of the bilingual speaker. Social bilingualism (or multilingualism) is an area of research dedicated to the study of its social dimension as a characteristic of bilingual and multilingual societies where more than one language are commonly used by a speech community or social group. It does not mean that all speakers have a command over both languages, rather the term just implies that at least some of the members of that speech community are capable of using the other language, either productively or receptively. Individual bilingualism (or bilinguality) is rather simple to define in terms of the first half of the term as it refers to the individual part of the phenomenon, that is, an individual has some knowledge of two or more languages. It is not possible to make a clear separation between bilingualism as an individual or societal phenomenon. In the last decades a large amount of research on individual bilingualism has tried to distinguish different sorts of bilingualism. The classification first introduced by WEINREICH differentiates between coordinate, compound and sub-coordinate bilingualism and was elaborated by taking as a starting point the way the concepts and meanings are encoded in the brain. Each of these three divisions stem from the way in which the languages were leared. Coordinate bilingualism assumes that languages are learned in different conditions and separate contexts in which would imply that the languages are kept apart in the mind. Under such circumstances, different contexts give way to different meanings with dissimilar conceptual systems. Compound bilingualism arises when acquisition takes place in a situation in which both languages are learned in the same context, and both meanings show a fused representation or meaning in the brain. This entails that the languages involved are somehow interdependent. Sub-coordinate bilingualism, derives from the learning of one language first and the learning of the other later on. Another dimension in the study of bilingualism is that which distinguished between balanced bilingualism which refers to an individual who has equivalent competence in both languages and the dominant bilingualism that applies to someone whose competence in the mother tongue surpasses his competence in the other language, at least in some domains. Balanced bilingualism entails a high communicative competence in both languages but not necessarily monolingual competence in both languages. Balanced bilingualism should be understood in relative terms as bilingual speakers hardly ever show equal speaking and writing abilities in their languages, they are rarely equally fluent about all topics in all contexts. Dominant 12

Introduction to Sociolinguistics bilingualism is actually the norm as it is rather difficult for a bilingual speaker to reach absolutely even competence in two codes. Another possible dimension to distinguish various types of bilingualism is related to the age of acquisition, so a useful dimension can be drawn between childhood bilingualism in which the development of bilingualism takes place at the same time as the childs cognitive development, adolescent bilingualism in which the cognitive representation of the world, to give an example, has already been completed, at least to a certain extent, and there is mainly a process of re-labeling previous concepts and adult bilingualism, the same as adolescent bilingualism. Additive bilingualism occurs when both languages are socially valued. In this case, the acquisition of the second language does not have adverse effects on the language or languages already known. Subtractive bilingualism, conversely, results from a sociocultural context where the mother tongue is detracted and, as a consequence, the childs cognitive development may be hindered because the development of the second language interferes with the development of the first language. 3 CODE CHIOCE: As WARDHAUGH suggests, the term code is admittedly loose but very useful to refer to any kind of system that two or more people use for communication. Terms like dialect, language, style, standard, register, variety, pidgin and creole are prone to arouse emotions that, in one way or the other, are affected by their sociopolitical status or individual considerations. In the case of bilingual or bidialectal speakers, it would be interesting to know, however, the factors that rule code choice on ever single situation and, eventually, why certain speakers sometimes shift from one code to another. Language choice can also be considered a way to assert some kind of right or even to resist some kind of power in places where two or more languages coexist and have equal sociopolitical status as in Canada. The underlying issue is that motivation is a determining component in codechoice and code-switching as there are numerous factors that affect it: solidarity with the listener, choice of topic, social distance, contextual and situational appropriacy, register, interlocutor, etc. The very fact of being proficient in more than one language allows for the possibility of switching codes at some point. Wardhaugh distinguishes two main types of code-switching: situational which refers to a language change depending on contextual factors which have nothing to do with the topic but with the given situation and metaphorical which points to the topic and the contents of the communicative process as the main reason for language choice. The alternance of code often encodes personal and social values that add interpersonal closeness or distance. Code - switching: 13

Introduction to Sociolinguistics At least three types of code-switching can be perceived. These are described by Romaine as: a) Tag-switching: for instance the use of exclamations or tags from one language into an utterance in the other language. This tag-switching might occur because the speaker lacks the necessary vocabulary in English, or simply because it come up more easily and spontaneously since tags are subjected to few syntactic restrictions and can be inserted without interfering with the syntactic organization of the utterance. b) Intersentential switch: This type of switch is found between sentences and often arises in sentence boundaries, marked with a short pause and between speaker turns. c) Intrasentential switch: both codes are mixed within a sentence. This type of code-switch contains the highest syntactic risk and is typically referred to as code-mixing. Code - mixing: Occurs when the interlocutors change from one language to the other in the course of a single conversation and more precisely when switching back and forth occurs with a clause. It is important to note that the speakers do not even need to be aware of it and the breaks between codes are somewhat blurred as they can occur within clauses. Code-mixing highlights hybridization whereas code-switching stresses the existence of movement from one language into the other. Code-mixing typically presumes a mastery of the codes being mixed and is very typical of bilinguals. Codemixing is also relatively common in the speech of immigrants. 4 CODE SWITCHING IN BILINGUAL CHILDREN: In the case of bilingual and multilingual speakers, code choice is not always at will. When two languages are at the disposal of the bilingual speaker, there are sometimes unintentional interferences between the two codes. This can be seen very clearly in children receiving a bilingual education when they mix both languages and transfer words, syntactic constructions or phonological features from one language into the other. As DE BOT points out, code-switching and the use of more than one language is the normal way of expressing oneself in a bilingual context and it is as natural as any other spontaneous speech coming from monolingual speakers. The analysis of how languages interact and are used by bilingual speakers can cast some light on the issue of cognitive processing by bilinguals, namely, the mechanisms of language selection and language separation. 5 DIGLOSSIA:

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Introduction to Sociolinguistics A diglossic situation entails the co-existence of two or more codes which are used in the same setting but under different circumstances, i.e., each of the codes is used with contrasting functional purposes. These codes or varieties tend to be kept apart in their functions, i.e., the purposes they are used for. So, given the existence of two varieties, one of them being considered more prestigious and cultivated than the other, would lead to the differentiation between a high variety (H) and a low variety (L). According to Ferguson, the specialization of functions for H and L varieties determines the appropriateness of either variety for a set of situations with few occasions for overlapping. In most instances of languages entangled in a diglossic situation, speakers regard H variety as being more prestigious, more appealing and more appropriate than the L variety, even if their knowledge of the H is not as comprehensive as their ability in the L, or the L variety embodies their mother tongue. 6 DIGLOSSIA AND BILINGUALISM: Diglossia, as it is stated in most works on the topic by JOHN GUMPERZ, does not only exist in multilingual societies but also in traditionally called monolingual societies where various dialects, registers or styles are employed. FISHMAN portrays the relationship between these two complex terms, diglossia and bilingualism, by means of the following chart: DIGLOSSIA + + BILINGUALIS M 1- Both diglossia And bilingualism. 3. Diglossia without Bilingualism. 2. Bilingualism without diglossia. 4- Neither diglossia nor bilingualism.

The first possibility (1) embraces a speech community where both diglossia and bilingualism occur, both codes are used alternatively from school age and used for different functions and in different contexts. The second possibility (2), bilingualism without diglossia, relates to the transitory situations where rapid social changes affect a speech community and, for a relatively brief period of time, the languages involved lack well-defined separate functions. This situation probably describes an individual linguistic behavior rather than a social one. The third possibility (3), diglossia without bilingualism, relates to societies where two or more languages share a 15

Introduction to Sociolinguistics geographic area but they are not inexorably used by speakers living in that area. That means that there are at least two speech communities that do not share a contact language and communication is attained by means of, for instance, interpreters. These societies tend to be formed by two or more speech communities that are united for functional purposes because of religious, political or economic reasons, although apparent social and cultural dissimilarities separate them. The fourth possibility (4) is, in Fishmans words, easier to hypothesize than to find as only very small and set apart societies could shoe neither bilingualism nor diglossia. It would be the case of speech communities where not differentiation in registers or varieties is found, which is rather improbable given the social dimension of language. 7 MULTILINGUALISM: Multilingualism refers to the co-existence of more than two languages or sufficiently distant dialects, no matter how many, within a speech community. Bilingualism is used to refer to a situation in which two languages coexist whether in an individual speaker or a social group. Monolingual speech communities are rare these days and, what is more, most countries in the world are multilingual. In the history of humankind, language has proven to be possibly the most important factor that determines other aspects of political and social organization in the world. Around 5.000 living languages are reported to exist nowadays in the world whereas there are about 200 countries. 8 LANGUAGE CONTACT: In places where two or more languages share a common geographic context or simply where one language stops being used by speakers and a different language is used, a situation of language in contact is encountered. There are many factors that pay a role in multilingualism and language contact and a larger number or outcomes from such situation are possible. In areas close to international borders, for instance, speakers of each of the different languages often develop a continuum, they speak dialects of their own languages which are close enough to the other language to permit successful communication. From a diachronic perspective, a contact situation between languages may result in the loss of one of the languages, if they are in a power relationship, or in the merging of both, if both languages are considered to have equal status and social consideration. Without doubt, language contact is the main source of language evolution and language change over time. Language contact can cause political conflict. Language conflict can be viewed as natural or artificial language conflicts. Natural language conflicts have been traditionally caused by political decisions regarding majority or minority social groups. Artificial language conflicts arise when a compromise is attained and a language is 16

Introduction to Sociolinguistics disfavored. The European Union, for instance, faces the problem of what languages should be officially spoken within the EU. The 25 member states at the moment speak 22 different official languages which turns their headquarters in Brussels into a veritable Tower of Babel and the tasks of translation and interpretation into a daunting enterprise.

UNIT 5 1 BILINGUAL EDUCATION: Bilingual education entails the accomplishment of a number of actions and decisions regarding multidisciplinary perspectives which can be political, economical, social, cultural and pedagogical. These can be analyzed from different angles. In the first place, bilingual education involves both a given language policy and a pedagogic realization in a particular classroom practice. In the second place, bilingual education deals with national or regional matters and by means of language planning it tries to assimilate minorities, integrate minority groups and/or spread intercultural understanding. Politics are doubtless always present in bilingual education as, for instance, in the case of Canada. It seems that for a (minority) language to survive it is necessary to meet certain conditions such as the ones put forward by Baker: a) Languages need to be used at home for interpersonal communication; that way they become mother tongues of new members in the family. b) Its presence through formal schooling. This provides the speakers with wider linguistic tools to interact outside a limited domestic setting and help in the social and psycholinguistic development of the individual. c) Its presence in economic circles as this guarantees that speakers will maintain or learn it for employment purposes. d) The association of the (minority) language with the culture and the literary tradition of the speech community. When the (minority) language is socially and culturally valued and is commonly used in the media and in social interactions, it has more social functions and, consequently, more chances to spread or simply be maintained. Bilingual education plays an important role in language maintenance and revival but it is not the only element. Recently there has been a general tendency to perceive bilingual education as very advantageous for everyone. This is due partly to the general reawakening of cultural identities and the subsequent revival of minority languages, and partly to the 17

Introduction to Sociolinguistics globalization process that makes new generations aware of the need to have a command of more than one language. Baker and Jones display eight particular advantages of bilingual education in modern societies: 1. Bilingual education allows the full development of the languages involved. This fact enables children to engage in wider communication and have more alternatives in patterns of communication with different generations, different cultural groups and different geographical areas. 2. Bilingual education promotes among children deeper insights into the cultures each language represents. It also avoids the stereotyping of different social and cultural groups, encourages social and cultural relativism and promotes a multiperspective viewpoint. 3. Bilingual education often results in biliteracy, i.e., the possibility of reading and writing in more than one language. 4. It seems that children are favoured with some cognitive benefits when they can speak two well-developed languages. 5. Bilingual education may raise the childrens self-esteem especially when the language of home is not the majority language in the society but is studied at school. 6. Canadian immersion studies suggest that curriculum achievement is connected to bilingual education. 7. The establishing of a secure identity within a particular community, especially in the case of minority languages. 8. Bilingual education also brings economic advantages as it can secure employment both in public services and private companies. Despite the aforesaid strong points of bilingual education it also needs to be taken into account that recent research has identified some drawbacks such as the following: (a) bilingual education does not guarantee effective schooling, in spite of the fact that it is often associated with academic success and, very often, it is the type of education preferred by uppermiddle classes in western societies and it is sometimes associated with an elitist education; (b) the language register used in formal education does not necessarily correspond with the language register needed outside the classroom, i.e., the type of academic language used as the means for teaching often does not correspond with the colloquial register that students in bilingual program can find outside the classroom, and this may result in some sort of exclusion by mother tongue speakers; (c) productive skills are sometimes not fully developed if the language of education is not present beyond the school, and this is precisely one of the most striking outcomes of 18

Introduction to Sociolinguistics Canadian bilingual education programs. Students, under ideal circumstances, seem to develop a full command of the language as far as receptive skills are concerned (listening and reading). Productive skills (speaking and writing), however, seem to develop to a lesser extent, which is not unusual in language learning in other contexts. 2 LANGUAGE POLICY: Language is rarely a causal factor and language decisions are essentially based on political and economic reasons. Language planning is actually part of a language policy that a given government adopts as regards one or more of the languages spoken in the country. 3 LANGUAGE PLANNING: Language planning consists of a deliberate and institutionally organized attempt to change the development of a language variety, or a language itself, or to alter its functions in society. Sometimes, language planning results from the need of a multilingual country to implement a language policy regulating the scope and use of the languages and/or language varieties within its territory. Wardhaugh posits that language planning constitutes a deliberate attempt to interfere with the natural development of a language or one of its varieties, i.e., it involves human intervention in the natural process of languages or varieties to change, spread or erode. Language planning began several centuries ago and various purposes may lie behind this intentional interference in the natural process of language evolution and change. It must be sail that these attempts have not always been honorable; while the aim may be to maintain a language that is about to disappear because of a continual loss of native speakers, on some occasions the goal is to repress and diminish a cultural or ethnic minority that found in their common language a sign of identity and a source of selfassertion. Languages reflect human relationships between individuals and also between social groups and they change in the course of time as a result of the changes in social relationships. A fully developed language policy or at least certain ideological trends almost invariably lie behind language planning. Indeed, Cobarrubias recognized four main types of ideology that typically prompt the rationale behind decisions regarding language planning: Linguistic assimilation considers that anyone forming part of a society, regardless of their origin, should learn the dominant language of that society. Linguistic pluralism implies the acceptance of various languages or varieties, and it can be centered on individual or geographical criteria, i.e., an individual may be stimulated to maintain his/her language in the case of a multilingual environment, where his/her 19

Introduction to Sociolinguistics language represents a minority that does not identify with a specific geographical area, or, more probably, in the case of a multilingual state that adopts various official languages as they are spoken in different geographical areas. Vernacularization entails the reconstruction or renewal of a language that is not used by a wide group of speakers but after some changes become widespread and adopted as an official language. Internationalism is reached when the motivation in language planning is to adopt a non-vernacular language for a wider interethnic communication as a political solution to an internal problem often arising from equally powerful minorities, one of them aiming at imposing their language as the official language, or the language of education and trade, for all.

Some factors affecting language planning: The following factors significantly determine the development and the incidence of language planning in a speech community. a) Socio-demographic factors profoundly affect language planning as the number of languages that are spoken and the number of speakers may favour the use of one language or the other. b) Linguistic factors may also play a role as the degree of development of one language as well as the existence of a literary tradition may be taken into account when deciding which language should be promoted or preserved. c) Socio-psychological factors affect peoples attitude towards one language or the other and their acceptance in a speech community. d) Political factors can influence the adoption of a specific alphabet, for example, the case of the Cyrillic alphabet introduced in middlecentral Asia by the Russians, and the adoption of the Latin alphabet in Turkey. e) Religious factors are also important. For instance Sudan, as a former colony, had English as official language but this was changed to Arabic, a language spoken by half the population, because of the stronger position of Islam in the country. The Bible has also been translated into many different languages. Actions in language planning: There follow 4 starting points that language planners have traditionally adopted in their task of language planning and which are attempts in themselves to describe the process or steps rather than the goals;

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Introduction to Sociolinguistics a) Selection of a norm. Multilingual countries very often need to make important decisions regarding the language or languages that will become official, or simply the language for education or any institutional purpose. b) Codification. Given the circumstance described immediately above, if an indigenous language is chosen as the standard, it may be necessary to make some changes and adapt it to meet the requirements of a language for wider communication within multilingual country. c) Modernization. Technological and scientific developments probably require modernization of specific vocabulary and very often a decision needs to be made on whether to adopt loan words or to coin new terms based on indigenous roots. d) Implementation. Once a decision has been made, the chosen language needs to be officially implemented and used in all sorts of official forums: education, parliament, media, etc. Aims of language planning: A given language policy with far-reaching or very precise aims affecting a speech community generally make use of more definite language planning actions to achieve these goals. Nahir sets forth eleven language planning functions or goals which can in fact be combined to handle the languagerelated problems and needs of speech community. His classification, describes the functions or goals they have sought until now in response to their language-related needs. Needs and aspirations are likely to change in the course of time. a) Language purification can be divided into two types: external purification and internal purification. External purification consists of the development of prescriptions of usage in order to protect the language from unwanted foreign influence by means, for example, of a Language Academy. Some of the actions taken are the creation of prescriptive grammars and dictionaries which contain the normalized use of the language and following the criteria set out by the Academy. Particularly notorious in this respect is the control over foreign lexical borrowings. Internal purification refers to the acceptance of the code as it exists at a certain point in history, protecting it from undesirable developments which are considered as non-normative (incorrect) or simply as deviations from the standard. The generation of these normative policies and their enforcement are tasks actively undertaken by language academies. b) Language revival consists of an attempt to revitalize a language a language with a small number of speakers (i.e., Irish and Welsh), or even a completely dead language (i.e., Hebrew and Cornish), and turn it into a means of communication for a speech community. 21

Introduction to Sociolinguistics c) Language reform involves the incorporation of specific changes in the language (e.g., spelling, grammar, pronunciation, etc.) attempting to facilitate its use. The aim of this reform can be to facilitate the use of the language by its users, the internationalization of the language, or many other factors, but always depending on political, ideological, religious or economical factors. d) Language standardization implies an attempt to adopt a language, or variety of language, as the major language of a region or nation for wider communication with official, educational, commercial or other functions. Language standardization is seen in the unification of small political units, the division of others and the recent independence of former colonial territories. e) Language spread involves an attempt to increase the number of speakers of a particular language, normally at the expense of another language or languages. This motivation for language shift often responds to political considerations in multilingual countries. Language spread is necessarily connected to language standardization by definition as the expansion of a language promoted by language planning agencies endeavors to institutionalize one language for some political or economic reason. f) Lexical modernization consists of the adaptation of existing vocabulary, or the creation of a new one, to assist standard languages that may have borrowed foreign vocabulary too fast to accommodate it to their orthography, pronunciation, etc. Nahir distinguishes two trends in terminological work (a) as part of either the process of codification or implementation of languages seeking revival (e.g., Hebrew) or reform (e.g., Turkish) that involves developing previously unwritten languages and aims at bridging the gap between them and modern knowledge and technology; and, (b) as part of a process of modernization of standard languages that have borrowed concepts and terms having a lexicon unprepared for those changes, i.e., the natural development of the language has not supplied the relevant terminology am dot os necessary to provide the terms that have come up as a result of social and technological advance. g) Terminology unification takes place when it is necessary to establish unified terminologies, mainly in the technological and scientific domains, in order to diminish ambiguity. Again this is largely an effect of globalization and cross cultural communication in the present world. h) Stylistic simplification is found when a language use needs to be disentangled in order to reduce communication ambiguity between two groups, for instance, professionals and bureaucrats on the one 22

Introduction to Sociolinguistics hand and ordinary people on the other. Such a situation may have been caused by the use of an archaic or literary style. Instances of such stylistically complex language, both in terms of lexical intricacy and grammatical elaboration, can be found in legal and medical language. i) Intercultural communication implies the adoption of a LWC with the intention of facilitating communication between members of different speech communities. Another way in which interlingual communication can be attained is by improving mutual intelligibiligty between speakers of cognate languages. This can be accomplished by partially standardizing the various linguistic codes in order to minimize differences. j) Language maintenance consists in the preservation of a groups native language when political, social, economic, educational or any other pressures threaten its further existence by causing a decline in status or in the number of speakers. Language maintenance can be exercised at two levels: first with the aim of preserving a widely spoken language from unwanted foreign influence; and, second, as a protection of a minority ethnic language whose acquisition and use needs to be encouraged by means of social, educational or political arrangements. k) Auxiliary-code standardization entails the modification of auxiliary aspects of the language to lessen ambiguity or to satisfy changing social, political or other recent needs. Changing place names can serve the functions of terminology unification or stylistic simplification, but most often they just take place when a given political party is in power. It should be taken into account that the language planning goals described above are not mutually exclusive and two or more phenomena can co-occur. On some occasions the goals and the procedures can even be contradictory as there may be some tension between, for example, language purification and lexical modernization. Individual language planning: On some occasions language planning does not need to be an initiative from governments or prominent institutions but they can also be the venture of individuals. 4 MINORITY LANGUAGES: Policy makers in multilingual nations need to make certain important decisions regarding the status of the languages in contact in a given territory: first, arises the choice of official or national language, which can be problematic in the case of developing nations composed of different ethnic groups; second, decisions need to be made regarding instruction in 23

Introduction to Sociolinguistics schools, which will definitely determine not only the general attitude towards a language but also the point of view of coming generations; and, third, on some occasions there is also a need to decide on the standardization procedures such as the choice of an alphabet or a given variety, especially in the case of languages having scripts different to the ones of currently internationalized languages. It can have 3 possible outcomes that determine the degree of success or failure of a specific language policy: a) Language maintenance, i.e., as a result of a course of action, the survival of a specific language, endangered or not, may be determined by political decisions. b) Bilingualism seems to be one of the most desirable outcomes in a prolonged contact of language groups as it guarantees the survival of the languages and seems to be the best way for multicultural and/or multiethnic societies to reach a common ground on linguistic and sociopolitical fields. c) Language shift seems to be another possible development and it would not entail one of the more desirable outcomes as it can give way to language loss. However, it is necessary to understand that language development does not depend solely on language policy decision making but also on sociocultural forces. More often than not, the spread of a language in terms of numbers of speakers takes place at the expense of another or other languages. 5 LANGUAGE SHIFT IN MINORITY LANGUAGES: Attitudinal factors also play a role in language maintenance or language shift. Voluntary individual or small group migration typically results in a quick language shift, whereas large groups migration often occasions the maintenance of social and linguistic hallmarks. This is the case, for instance of Swedish in Finland or French in Canada, where a minority ethnic group in demographic decay uses its language as a sign of cultural and social identity. This is more often so in minority groups with a strong sense of identity or with close cultural traditions and values because the use of a different language will slow down their assimilation by the dominant ethnic group. Besides, as Paulston suggests, maintained group bilingualism is rather unusual because if there is access to the dominant language, and socioeconomic incentives, speakers will most likely eventually shift to the dominant language, although this process may take generations. Language shift is not always the outcome of language contact, one of them a minority language. Languages can also be maintained due to self-imposed or externally imposed barriers. The former could be caused by ideological or religious constraints that try to preserve some sort of identity, and the latter could originate, for instance, because of some kind of geographical isolation. 24

Introduction to Sociolinguistics Another possibility is a diglossic situation where two or more languages are for different functional purposes. 6 SOME PARTICULAR SOCIOLINGUISTIC SITUATIONS: India: This country gained independence in 1947 and the federal government in India established a language policy. English, would be substituted by Hindi as the official language and, as the country was divided in states, most of them having their own language. Each regional language would also gain the status of official language in each state. Nowadays, multilingualism is encouraged in India and many children learn English and Hindi in the Devanagari script in school, the official language of the country, apart from their mother tongue, spoken at home, and the official language of their state. New Zealand: Almost all Maoris in New Zealand speak English and a large proportion of the young people are bilingual. However, many youngsters do not speak Maori anymore. Maori is endangered for several reasons. First, English is the language of education, second, Maori is spoken more commonly in rural areas and people prefer to live in cities where English is spoken. The Canadian Experience: In 1982, Canada became a constitutionally bilingual country and bilingualism continues to be a sociopolitical issue in this country today. By means of this recent Constitution, the English rights in Quebec were protected as much as the French rights outside Quebec. Bilingualism in the two official languages is mainly found in the population of French origin in the East of the country such as Montreal, Sherbrooke and Ottawa. By means of the Constitution Act in 1982, the Canadian central government undertook the task of protecting the French rights throughout the country, whereas the government in the province of Quebec took measures against the use of English within the province claiming that bilingualism in Quebec led to unilingualism in English. Nowadays, the actions undertaken to restrain the use of English in Quebec have been banned at the same time that some legislation in Manitoba that denied francophone rights has been modified, but the French-English division and debate is still present. French immersion began 30 years ago, in 1965, with an experiment carried out at St. Lambert School, Montreal, where a group of English speaking parents succeeded in getting the school district to initiate a bilingual immersion program with their children in kindergarten. The aim of these programs is for children to reach a level of bilingualism, and eventually of biculturalism, by secondary school graduation that allows them to function

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Introduction to Sociolinguistics well in French-speaking community or to access the job market or higher education in French. However, not all programs are equal and three types of immersion can be found as far as the starting age is concerned, (a) early immersion, which is offered from the earliest years of schooling (kindergarten, grade 1 or 2) and represents the most frequent sort of immersion; (b) delayed or intermediate immersion, is offered in later of schooling beginning in grade 4, and (c) late immersion is offered beginning in grades 6, 7 or later. Swain and Johnson set forth some core features in prototypical immersion programs. They indicate that the following characteristics cannot be understood on an all-or-nothing basis but as part of a continuum. They add that for a bilingual program to be labeled as immersion, it should accommodate each of these characteristics as much as possible: a) The L2 is used as a medium of instruction, in spite of being taught formally and only as a subject. The underlying methodological rationale is that of the communicative approach that proposes the increase of comprehensible input. b) The immersion curriculum is analogous to the one used with students not included in an immersion program. In this way, it is guaranteed that immersion students get the same content and the only variable is the use of the L2 as a medium of instruction. c) The L1 receives obvious support as an essential component of the curriculum, sometimes as a subject and sometimes as the medium of instruction. d) Additive bilingualism constitutes the chief aim of the program. This principle entails that at the end of the program students L1 proficiency should be comparable to those who have studied through their L1, i.e., L2 proficiency should not be attained at the expense of the L1. e) L2 exposure is by and large restricted to the classroom context, at least in some immersion programs such as those in Canada, where parents or friends do not use the language of instruction. Obviously, this constitutes a disadvantage for the students. f) All students joint the program with similar levels of L2 proficiency. Some degree of homogeneity is this respect facilitates the adoption of a curriculum and pedagogy that matches most students needs. g) Teachers are bilingual in the students L1 and the L2 medium of instruction.

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Introduction to Sociolinguistics h) The classroom culture of a prototypical immersion program is that of the local L1 community instead of that of the culture of the L1, i.e., where that language is used as an L1. 7 EUROPEAN UNION LANGUAGE PLANNING AND POLICY: There is a need to convert the rich heritage of diverse languages and cultures in Europe from a barrier to communication into a source of mutual understanding. A better knowledge of European modern languages will facilitate communication and interaction among Europeans and will promote mobility and mutual understanding. In this case, the aim of a particular language planning and policy is to unify millions of speakers under a political and economical administration and given the amount of different languages it seems necessary to find a common ground for interaction without losing either cultural or linguistic identity. This multiplicity of circumstances exhibits the need to develop a common EU language policy in order to promote interrelation among the different member states and the common understanding of peoples. To add controversy to the issue, Trimm mentions that a major problem concerning the subject of language learning and language planning is the lack of an organic unit to take responsibility for it. He adds that there is no longitudinal unity as responsibilities change with the transfer of children from elementary school to high school and the university, and different agencies may be involved in the setting of curricular guidelines, teaching materials and assessment. Given the aforesaid circumstances a high degree of variability is to be expected within an international organization like the EU. Policy makers, aware of the far-reaching repercussions of a good or bad language policy for the future of the European common market, have established some guidelines that try to promote the use of international languages for intercultural communication. They have also undertaken some actions regarding the maintenance of minority languages. So far, the following documents have been already elaborated: a) The European Charter for Minority or Regional Languages. b) The CE Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities. c) The Oslo Recommendations regarding the Linguistic Rights of National Minorities within the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). d) The Hague Recommendations Regarding the Education Rights of National Minorities.

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Introduction to Sociolinguistics The EU has reached a strong consensus on the fundamentals for foreign language teaching and some programs have been developed for the exchange of students and teachers in order to favor the learning of other EU languages, to aid teacher training, to encourage awareness-raising, and to promote the cultural exchange among different educational system. The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages is a document that provides a practical tool for establishing certain standards at successive stages of learning and evaluating language knowledge. It aims at providing the basis for setting common standards within the EU at an international level and provides the basis for the mutual recognition of language qualifications within the EU, and therefore facilitating educational and occupational mobility. The framework describes: a) The competences necessary for communication; b) The related knowledge and skills; c) The situations and domains of communication. 8 THE ROLE OF ENGLISH: English has spread widely all over the world, first because of the influence of the British Empire and, second due to the preeminence of North American culture in the world. In Europe, English has advanced as an international language especially after the World War II, leaving behind other preeminent languages such as French. English is now used by millions of speakers for numbers of communicative functions across Europe. English seems to have been adopted as the language of globalization these days. Proficiency in English is seen as a desirable goal for youngsters and elderly people in all EU countries and in many parts of the world, to the point of equating inability in the use of English to disability. 9 THE UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF LINGUISTIC RIGHTS: In 1996, a world-wide representation of non-governmental organizations with the support of the UNESCO approved The Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights (UDLR) in Barcelona, Spain. The main aim of this document is to turn the worlds nations attention to the problems arising from a globalized world with greater movements of people, and to preserve everyones right to a language identity. The original document contains 52 articles and some additional dispositions embracing may aspects of linguistic rights. Below are some of the general principles that this document tries to establish: 1. The UDLR safeguards the personal rights to adhere to a linguistic identity and to develop ones own culture. 2. The UDLR considers that all language communities are equal and therefore merit official recognition in all kinds of social, political and 28

Introduction to Sociolinguistics economic respects (e.g., education, law, trade, public administration, etc.). 3. The UDLR is especially concerned about the role that education plays in the maintenance and spread of a language and accordingly it states that education must help to maintain and develop the language spoken by the language community. In addition to this, it encourages the most extensive possible command of any other language they may wish to know. 4. The UDLR claim the right to use proper names and place names in the language specific to the territory, both orally and in writing. 5. The UDLR supports the right to decide the extent to which a minority language should be present in the media in a given territory, and to receive a thorough knowledge of its cultural heritage through it. 6. The UDLR declares the right to preserve their linguistic and cultural heritage. 7. The UDLR watches over the right to use the language in all socioeconomic activities and to have full legal validity. Brumfit considers that this document is based on the idea of language communities and little account is taken of the language rights of individuals.

UNIT 6 1 SOCIOLINGUISTIC AND LANGUAGE TEACHING/ LEARNING: Language teaching and learning and sociolinguistics have certain common concerns, such as the role of English in the world, the contexts in which this language is acquired, the way in which it interacts with other languages, and the norms that determine the use of English. Communicative Competence shapes the ability to interact successfully in any speech community. Someone who has acquired the language in a naturalistic context from childhood also acquires sociolinguistic rules together with linguistic knowledge and other competences. The learning environment also raises the issue whether sociolinguistic rules can, or should, be taught in a classroom context or whether this is something the language learner will deal with in due course when s/he has the chance to interact within a speech community where the language being learned is spoken as a mother tongue. A second issue raised in this respect is the motivation and purpose of learning the language, that is, if it is learnt to be used within an English-speaking speech community or if it is to be learned as a LWC to communicate with other non-native speakers, for 29

Introduction to Sociolinguistics example, English being used among other tongue speakers of different languages in EU. The inclusion of sociolinguistic behavior in teaching materials will help the language learner to develop his/her ability to interact successfully in a foreign speech community and will gradually integrate both linguistic and sociolinguistic information. We, as native speakers of a speech community, should not assume that all the linguistic and social resources we make use of are part of our conscious knowledge and, therefore, we may have intuitions regarding our speech behavior in a speech community which do not clearly correspond with actual behavior. Two aspects need to be taken into account: a) whose rules of speaking we want to include in the teaching materials; and b) to what extent we can generalize them to the point of using them in second language instruction. Anyhow, it seems clear that the sociolinguistic information needed in order to be communicatively competent should come from interaction with native speakers or proficient speakers of the language. 2 COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE IN LANGUAGE TEACHING/ LEARNING: The concept of communicative competence comprises various types of knowledge and skills such as linguistic, sociolinguistic and pragmatic. Communicative Competence is needed for success interaction among members of the same speech community. Linguistic competences refer to the knowledge of lexical, phonological and syntactical elements and other dimensions of language that the language learner has learned as part of the system, such as sociolinguistic rules and pragmatic knowledge. Linguistic competence comprises the knowledge of vocabulary, pronunciation rules, syntactic patterns and the cognitive organization and storage of this knowledge in the brain of the language learner. Linguistic competence will vary from one learner to another depending on various factors such as the number of years spent learning the second language, the rate of learning, the age when contact with the second language started, the learners motivation, the learning context, etc. But language is a social behavior and is more than just a knowledge of the linguistic system. Sociolinguistic competences are concerned with the social and cultural traditions for the use of language and the social conventions that rule language use in a specific speech community. These would comprise norms regarding politeness, norms regarding relations between the sexes or different classes, social groups or generations, norms regarding different registers, etc. In the foreign language curriculum, sociolinguistic competences are not always present and when they are, they are often considered of side importance and something that the language learner will acquire on his/her own in due time. As a rule the more distant and different 30

Introduction to Sociolinguistics the native culture of the language learner and the target language culture, the more differences the language learner will find and the harder it will be to notice them. Pragmatic competences refer to the functional use of linguistic resources such as language functions and speech acts in interaction. It also concerns itself with the language learners mastery of discourse markers, cohesion and coherence and the recognition of text types, the presence of irony, parody and politeness among other things. 3 THE SOCIOLINGUISTIC BEHAVIOUR OF ENGLISH SPEAKERS: RULES OF SPEAKING: The analysis of sociolinguistic behavior in native English speaking communities can provide useful insights for the teaching and learning of languages as the description of rules of speaking can help the teacher and the learner to systematize the process of language learning. Below are two samples of some rules of speaking regarding address behavior and telephoning that can certainly be taught in the classroom setting with relative ease, although others like greetings, partings or refusals could also have been selected. Address behavior: Some of the earliest sociolinguistic studies on speech behavior from a cross linguistic perspective were done on the forms of address, that is, the way people address one another in different situations. Whenever one person speaks to another there is a whole range of options that the speaker can use to refer to the addressee and these may vary from one language to the other depending on the social conventions; the type of relationship among the interlocutors; and the sociocultural distance between the languages involved. Forms of address constitute a conspicuous sign of status relationships and different languages may offer different possibilities and different degrees of formality and social distance. This is, in fact, a frequent mistake made by language learners as the use of L1 sociopragmatic rules lead to violations of the interlocutors address behavior. Telephoning: The way people answer the phone or initiate a telephone conversation varies from language to language and from culture to culture. These sociolinguistic rules are not generally open to conscious consideration and very often speakers are just unaware of their existence until their sociolinguistic expectations are broken and they realize that these rules actually exist. 4 SOCIOLINGUISTIC PERSPECTIVES ON LANGUAGE USE IN IMMERSION CLASSROOMS: 31

Introduction to Sociolinguistics Bilingual education and immersion programs often respond to social needs and aim at developing proficiency in the second language for students that will need it for one reason or the other. The accrual implementation and degree of success of these programs is subjected, however, to a number of external factors resulting from special sociopolitical situation, a variation in the teaching resources available, the extent of immersion, the status of the L2 outside the classroom, etc. This means that whatever decisions and actions seem plausible from a theoretical and formal point of view may not have as good results as expected when they are put into practice. One of the problems found through classroom observation is that a diglossic situation can easily develop in immersion classrooms just as in any speech community, that is, the language of instruction, or superordinate language, acts as the formal language variety used with the teacher and used as a language for academic purposes, and the L1 is preferred in informal speech and social interaction with other classmates and acts as the subordinate language, or vernacular, preferred for peer interaction in play, competition, arguing, etc. Tarone and Swain indicate that [] immersion classrooms are not only diglossic but become increasingly so in the upper primary grades., and this can be seen by a close observation of the types of L2 input and L2 output within the classroom, the individuals involved in the interaction, and the purposes of the information exchange. The main difference between this type of diglossic speech community, and any other occurring outside this context, is that instead of being stable, these special speech communities in classroom immersion change over time due to aspects such as cognitive, social or personal factors affecting this peculiar speech community, i.e., they change as they become grownups and their social and cognitive resources become mature. This situation may be caused by the fact that the L2 language taught by the teachers and learned by the students normally performs specific functions, such as instructional public discourse, but it does not serve other interpersonal and trivial purposes which should also be part of the acquired repertoire. 5 ANALYSIS OF THE EFL CLASSROOM LANGUAGE: Classroom language is relatively organized and purposive in contrast to casual conversation in an ordinary social setting. This can be seen, for instance, in the way turn-taking is organized. In casual interaction the interlocutors express agreement and disagreement in a number of ways but they often interrupt each other as part of the communication process and their resources to show their opinion. In the classroom context, turn-taking is frequently determined by the types of interlocutors and, if involved, dominated by the teacher who is often more concerned about how things are said rather that what is being said. Classroom language is in many ways an unusual form of spoken interaction that often has nothing to do with real or general English, both in terms of discourse markers and type of interaction and also in terms of language structure and choice.

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Introduction to Sociolinguistics Classroom language is also part of an asymmetric encounter. One of the participants is accepted as controlling the direction of the dialogue and s/he, therefore, makes use of a particular language that is known among specialists as teacher talk. Teacher talk constitutes a variety of language sometimes used by teachers when they are in the process of teaching, i.e., a conventionalized way of speaking in a particular role, in this case the role of the teacher, which does not differ at the level of linguistic structure but does differ in some other general features such as higher pitch, more careful intonation and enunciation, shorter sentences, more frequent repetitions and more questions than usual in colloquial speech. The teacher is the addressee of most student utterances and this is favoured by the way classes have traditionally been conceived and, enhanced by the classrooms physical organization. In traditional classroom settings there are often asymmetric encounters as the teacher tends to have the knowledge and hold a position of power in relation to students. The three-part chain of teacher initiation, student response, and teacher evaluation is probably the most frequent pattern of classroom discourse at all grade levels. The analysis of teacher-led classroom discourse generally finds examples of this pattern, and anyone hearing it recognizes it as an instance of classroom talk. So, teachers tend to initiate interaction and students generally respond to these intuitions. Later, teachers often provide a follow up response that can be interpreted as a feedback for the students. These three common moves can be summarized as: ( I)nitiation (by teacher); (R)esponse (by the student) and (F)ollow up (by teacher). The teacher controls both the development of the topic and who gets or gives a turn to talk. What is more, s/he does not ask real questions because s/he already knows the answers and, in fact, all that s/he does is to check the students answers. Another important aspect to take into account about this excerpt is that a language classroom is special in the sense that language is used to talk about language (metalanguage) rather than other subjects where the language is just a vehicle to talk about contents. 6 IMPLICATIONS FOR LANGUAGE TEACHING: The practice that students generally get in spoken interaction may well fit them for their communication needs and their role in the classroom, but it does nothing, or at least not enough, to help them with the roles they will need to play in English outside the classroom. Immersion programs entail content-based instruction and is, in a way, similar to task-based instruction. Students in these programs are expected to learn a second language through its use in teaching other subjects but recent research has shown that this sort of restricted sociolinguistic context limits the possibilities of the learners to interact and they therefore largely develop receptive skills but their productive skills are limited as the 33

Introduction to Sociolinguistics exposure to abundant comprehensible input is not all they need. Swain has pointed out that forced output also plays a role in comprehensive language learning. Attempts should be made to enhance and widen the varieties of input the learner has access to and, also, and more importantly, to force students output. One possible direction to help break across the authority structure in the classroom is greater use of student-student interaction, including tasks, and pair and group work. 7 PRAGMATICS IN LANGUAGE TEACHING: In recent years, curricula and teaching materials have began to include strong pragmatic components or to adopt a pragmatic approach as their organizing principle. Many proposals for instruction in various aspects of pragmatic competence are based on the analysis of native speaker discourse or on the comparison of interlanguage data, as well as contrasting L1 and L2 data. Intelanguage pragmatics, i.e., the study and use of pragmatics features by language learners that make use of their interlanguage have not been studied in depth and further research is needed to investigate how the learning of L2 pragmatics is shaped by instructional context and activities. Kasper and Rose put forward that language learners can benefit from positive transfer of communicative acts that have been found contrast across ethnolinguistically distant speech communities as it is the case of the speech act set for apologies. This speech act comprises as its chief semantic formulas an explicit apology, an explanation and the admission or denial of responsibility. Among its minor strategies are the offer of repair, a promise of forbearance, and an expression of concern for the hearer, and these strategies are reported to have been found in a number of languages like English, French, German, Hebrew, Thai and Japanese. Sometimes the link between the strategy in the L1 and L2 may not be so evident and, what is more, language learning involves a complex psycholinguistic process and a positive transfer does not always occur in the way that was expected. There is then a need for description of pragmalinguistic knowledge and its use in the classroom. 8 LANGUAGE IN THE LAW: The interface between sociolinguistics and the law is also known as forensic linguistics and centers on the study of discourse in legal settings and texts, from the courtroom to police or lawyer interviews. Language use in legal contexts is not essentially different from any other communicative situation, although the way language is used in legal settings can have enormous repercussions for the well being of individuals and communities. The use of language in legal contexts reflects situational characteristics that shape the form of legal discourse and in so doing shows specific characteristics like any other language variety. 34

Introduction to Sociolinguistics Early studies in courtroom discourse by W. M. OBarr and John Conley in the late 1970s examined the influence of language factors on legal decisionmaking and found out that witnesses generally make use of one of two styles: a powerless style incorporating a high frequency of intensifiers (really, great, much more) and many hedges (kind of, like, in a way..); or a powerful style that lacks the aforementioned features and therefore sounds more exact and confident. Another feature of discourse in the courtroom is the clear power imbalance between the lawyer and the witness given the fact that the former definitely controls the discourse by long-winded questioning that require minimal response, being coercive and controlling, or simply not letting the witness tell his/her own story except in the way the s/he wants it to be told. An example of the way this can be attained is by using Yes-No questions with a tag, which markedly control the answer in opposition to broad WH questions that pave the way for personal interpretation. Eades provides a list of some other linguistic strategies that can be used by lawyers to exercise control over witnesses like: a) Interruptions, b) Reformulation of witnesss descriptions of events or people, c) Manipulation of lawyer silence, for example, with the use of strategic pauses, d) Nonrecognition of some witnesses need to use silence as part of the answer, which can be particularly important, for example, for Australian Aboriginal witnesses, e) Incorporation of damaging presuppositions in questions, f) Metalinguistic directives given to the witness and, g) Management of topics in order to convey a particular impression to the jury. The study of speech behavior in legal language constitutes a clear example of how sociolinguistics can have another clear application for our lives. Therefore, studies in applied sociolinguistics regarding legal language have undertaken 3 main areas: (a) the communicative difficulties that typically occur from the interface between the legal-layperson as a result of the interaction between lawyers, judges, juries, victims, witnesses, suspects, etc.; (b) the comprehension of legal texts are in themselves a source of communicative problems because of the specific jargon that is used as well as the intricacy of the syntax that is generally used; and (c) as a consequence of globalization, colonization and the migration movements, there is an emerging demand for studies relating communication problems faced by non-native speakers witnesses, suspects and defendants in the legal process. This situation requires the presence of well-trained 35

Introduction to Sociolinguistics interpreters that apart from a comprehensive language knowledge, also need to know the subtleties of pragmatics. 9 STANDARD ENGLISH AND THE WORLD ENGLISHES: Standard English is a term that refers to the variety of English used by the social elite who are part of a socially, economically and politically dominant group in English-speaking countries. This variety is the one usually preferred in the media and generally taught in schools as it is considered to be prestigious. Non-standard English, on the other hand, refers to those varieties that do not conform to the standard spoken by formally educated native speakers in term of pronunciation, grammatical structure, idiomatic usage, or choice of words. The standard of any language is usually associated not only with a socially, culturally and economically dominating group but also with geographic variation, i.e., in the regions where institutional and economic power is located or more developed. Defining and delimiting a standard is not always easy or even possible as different varieties can be considered a standard in distant countries or regions. So, it is not to say that the RP (Received Pronunciation) which is generally considered the standard in England is the same as the English standard in Ireland, Australia or the USA, where there are also a set of features including pronunciation, grammatical structure, idiomatic usage and choice of words that is characteristic of formally educated speakers, the language of formal instruction, the institutions and the media. There has also been a demand for local standards Indian, South African, Nigerian, Jamaican, etc. and whenever these varieties vary from one another and from British and American Standard English in the way British and American vary from each other they can be counted as standard English, whereas varieties with a higher degree of variance are nonstandard. The dispersal or diaspora, of English over the world can be divided into two phases. The first diaspora involved the migration of around 25.000 people from England, Scotland and Ireland to North America, Australia and New Zealand. The varieties of English used nowadays in these places are not identical with those spoken by the early colonizers but they can be said to share some general features and these varieties have developed through history incorporating vocabulary from the indigenous languages they came into contact with. The second diaspora occurred at different moments during the 18th and 19th centuries with different results from the first dispersal. The spread of English in Africa took place differently for the West Africa and East Africa. English in West Africa is linked to the slave trade and the development of pidgin and creole languages. Since the 15 th century, British traders traveled to and from the west coast of Africa but there was no settlement in the areas today comprising Gambia, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Nigeria and Cameroon. This situation favoured the use of English as lingua franca among the hundreds of indigenous languages and the Englishspeaking traders. Some of the pidgins and creoles that developed from 36

Introduction to Sociolinguistics English contact are now widely used, mostly as a second language, as it is the case of Krio and Cameroon Pidgin. In East Africa the situation of English was very different because English colonizers settled there from 1850 on in places like Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The role of English in these countries was very obvious and this language was used in the government, education and the law. In the second half of the 20th centuries these countries gained independence and English was kept as an official language in some of them, and as a second language in others. An English-based creole, Swahili is also used as a lingua franca in Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania. During the second half of the 18 th C. English was extensively introduced in South Asia (India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, etc.) due to British trade interests in the area. Simultaneously, British influence extended to South-East Asia and the South Pacific due to the seafaring expeditions of Cook and other expeditions, expanding to Singapore, Malasya, Hong Kong and the Philippines and the Pacific islands like Papua New Guinea where a new pidgin was developed, Tok Pisin. Y. Kachru developed a model of the spread of English that has been most influential in the field of sociolinguistics. He divides World Englishes into 3 concentric circles: the Inner Circle, the Outer Circle and the Expanding Circle. These 3 areas stand for the types of spread, the patterns of acquisition, and the position of the English language in the different cultural contexts as the language has traveled from Britain to the US, Australia and New Zealand in the first diaspora (the Inner Circle), to countries like Zambia, Pakistan, India, etc, in the second diaspora (the Outer Circle), and, more recently, to countries where English is learned and used as a Foreign language, for instance, Spain, Japan, Germany, etc. (the Expanding Circle). With reference to the status of these languages in relation to the standard, the English spoken in the Inner Circle would be considered as normproviding, i.e., it represents a model and is used as a native language; the English spoken in the Outer Circle could be considered norm-developing, that is, used in countries where the variety if English is in the process of being accepted (or has been recently adopted), and is spoken as a SL apart from other indigenous languages; and, the Expanding Circle would be norm-dependent because it is learned as a FL and the standard is taken as it is. English spoken in the Inner Circle shows clear patterns of variation both in terms of geographical and social differences. The outer-circle varieties are normally spoken as part of a multilingual repertoire that may include a number of other languages spoken in different circumstances (New Englishes). In the expanding circle, English will not be used for official purposes such as the language of general formal education, religion, courts and the law, national politics or administration, literature, etc. but it can be used in international relations, international organizations, research, education at specialized levels, publicity and business, among other functions. 37

Introduction to Sociolinguistics

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